


Marks of the Master

by Zenithyl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (sort of) Faustian Bargain, Afterlife, Dead People, Death, Deathly Hallows AU, Elder Wand, Gaunt Ring, Gen, Gods, Half-Blood Prince AU, Harry follows his instincts, Harry's Snitch, Horcrux Hunting, Horcruxes, Indefinable connection, Invisibility Cloak, Magical Inheritance, Marks, Master & Servant, Master of Death, Master of Death Harry Potter, Old Magic, Post-Deathly Hallows AU, Resurrection Stone, Souls, The Deathly Hallows, The Tale of the Three Brothers, Underworld, and let’s not forget the God of Death, in addition to a Master of Death, plus an Avatar of Death, servitude, there are two Deaths
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-04-05 22:52:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 54,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4198062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zenithyl/pseuds/Zenithyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>…Don’t necessarily make the master. If anything, it’s the other way around.</p><p>
<i>“The Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, the Cloak of Invisibility.</i><br/>
<i>Together, they make the Deathly Hallows.</i><br/>
<i>Together, they make one Master of Death.”</i></p><p>Except, Beatle the Bard was not quite right—and neither was Xenophilius Lovegood.</p><p>
Now Harry must find his own path as the Master of Death, all the while dancing a one-man tap dance between Death above and Death below. What’s worse, unmaking and remaking the Hallows is only the first step.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Zeroth step - Legacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which Harry first finds the Hallows, and then the Hallows find him._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone that follows my works might've noticed that I haven't posted in a while. Well, know that it was caused by a plot bunny, this fic's plot bunny to be precise, and it has spawned this _monster_ of a first chapter while also giving me plenty of material to write more chapters to follow up with.
> 
> Considering that I usually produce about 1,500-2,000 words a month and now managed to write a new piece of about 15,000 words in less than three months (excluding what I've written for other works)... That's quite a big difference.
> 
> Expect this fic's chapter lengths to vary wildly and the chronological order to be out of whack. You have been warned.

Harry Potter vaguely remembered the many times he had wondered just why there had always been so much _death_ around him. With dead parents, dead grandparents, dead classmate, dead godfather, dead teachers, dead protectors, even dead enemies, Harry thought there could be no doubt there was an abundance of lives that had ended around him and usually because of him. He had seen too much death throughout his life and he was utterly sick of it.

Why wasn’t he allowed to have peace? Why was fate so cruel when it came to him? Why—why was he cursed to always be alone, never wanted by those that survived?

Sometimes, Harry Potter felt like cursing the world, swearing vengeance on whatever force out there stuck him with his life. In spite of everything, he couldn’t ever bring himself to do so. It just wasn’t in him to truly hate anything, no matter how screwed up his life became.

Because Harry had lived his life surviving everything that was thrown at him, and knew all too well the twists and turns it could take even now to bugger it all to hell.

Events that had long been in the making, hidden to him in the background of things that he either didn’t have knowledge of or simply couldn’t get around to investigate with his life being the way it was, finally entered his life during that fateful conversation in the headmaster’s office. Neither of the two wizards had any idea of what entity would soon be knocking on the proverbial door of their lives.

Had they been asked, they might’ve suspected Fate or Destiny, they could possibly have answered Death or Life, and there was a small chance they would’ve thought of War, Chaos or Luck—but the facts of the matter were; there was nobody to pose them the question and, no matter their choice, the response would undoubtedly be wrong—though for reasons neither would understand.

The entity, for that matter, was named Time—and oh how it would twist that what they had always perceived to be straightforward and uninterrupted in loops and knots and loose ends that shouldn’t be possible.

Many years, decades, later Harry would still think himself no closer to unravelling the strands that had tangled in uncountable instances of messy coils.

He _would_ have learnt by that time to let them be—though not without gaining some knowledge on how to read their patterns, and plan ahead for the things they told him to anticipate.

When Albus Dumbledore showed his student the ring the aged headmaster had carelessly picked up—the one that had brought the curse to the same blackened hand the old man wore it on—Harry could finally get a good look at the cracked stone it held, and he was immediately struck by a jumble of peculiar feelings.

He felt elation; as if a weight on his shoulders had been lessened, he felt some giddiness; basically a more complicated version of excitement, but most of all he felt…

Recognition.

And that last part had _nothing_ to do with the memory involving the ring he had viewed not too long before.

It was the same mixture of feelings he’d had that fateful Christmas in first year—specifically the moment when his precious invisibly cloak had fallen out of the Christmas wrappings it had been delivered in—Harry realised several seconds later.

The Gryffindor immediately knew that the name Professor Dumbledore knew it by—the Gaunt Ring—was _wrong_. Oh, the name itself was no lie; it was a ring, yes, and it was a Gaunt family heirloom…

But, however apt, the name was still wrong.

Harry barely paid attention to the old wizard’s words of farewell as he rushed back to Gryffindor Tower without a care about who saw him this late at night. Ron and Hermione were not in the common room, despite promising to wait up for him. Harry would later hear they had both been unexpectedly called away for prefect duties.

Once back in the dorm room he ran to his trunk, intent to check on his cloak, to verify if the feelings he had come to associate with the cloak were indeed the same as the ones he’d had from the Gaunt Ring moments before.

Harry was still catching his breath from his run when he found the silvery enchanted garment where he’d left it in his trunk and lifted it out with a care he had never shown it before—as if his precious inheritance would break with too rough handling. Then the sixth year sat down heavily on his bed with the cloak draped over his lap and legs, holding up the hood for examination.

The cloth it was made from felt just as smooth and silky as when he had last held it, just like it was that Christmas Dumbledore had returned it—because it was his, a heirloom his father had left him—to Harry. The rush of positive emotions was back in full force and he now recognised them as what he had always assumed to be simple happiness at owning something of his father’s. Harry now knew his delight held so much more than that.

But there seemed to be a tiny flaw in there somewhere, and it made him frown. A minute fault in the fabric of feelings that he wouldn’t have been able to find had he not been scrutinising them so closely.

Something was wrong.

It felt… incomplete, weakened, not as strong as they _should be_. He had never realised it before.

The nostalgia he was feeling while handling his cloak was ever so slightly tainted.

Harry didn’t know what to make of that.

Awakened as he was to the feelings both his cloak and that ring produced in him, Harry instinctively knew there was one last object _somewhere_ to complete the group—which was apparently a trio. As surely as he knew of its existence, the student also knew that the last piece was sure to be nearby—though for the life of him he wouldn’t know where this knowledge came from.

The confusion constantly niggling at the back of his mind over feeling the presence of the last object, but not knowing what or where it was, lasted until his next session with headmaster Dumbledore.

When the memory version of the old wizard set memory-Riddle’s wardrobe on fire, Harry absently registered that the Professor used a different wand than the one he was used to seeing in the man’s hand.

Being too preoccupied with the things the headmaster had shown him, Harry only noticed on his way out that Professor Dumbledore no longer wore the Gaunt Ring. That last thought then set off another one—now on the subject of the missing ‘piece’—that kept him busy until he was long since settled into bed.

The tangent of thoughts finally led to Harry realising that the incessant hum of power he’d always felt while in the company of the headmaster likely _wasn’t_ , in fact, caused by said wizard’s magic as he had initially assumed and had never seen reason to doubt.

Seeing the memory of Albus Dumbledore without the always prevalent magical presence he’d come to associate with the powerful Transfiguration Master had made it clear to Harry that he had been mistaken on the origin of the power.

With the only notable change between the two versions of the headmaster being the two different wands, Harry could be more than reasonably sure that the current wand was the object he was looking for. Therefore, the next time Harry was called to the headmaster’s office, he paid close attention to the wand briefly taken out to transfer memories from various vials to the pensieve.

His theory was instantly confirmed.

The wand felt even more ancient than the person that wielded it and—now that Harry thought about it—so did both the cloak and the ring. The power that saturated the very air around headmaster Dumbledore was definitely the wand’s magic.

It just felt so _alive_ that Harry had always mistaken it for the Professor’s.

Now Harry was more distracted than ever before, what with the shenanigans of one Malfoy heir, the mystery of one Half-Blood Prince, schoolwork and his duties as Quidditch captain. On top of that, Albus Dumbledore had seen fit to give Harry the task of recovering the true version of Slughorn’s memory—of which he was shown the false version only moments earlier—when he was dismissed from the office.

Ron’s poisoning some two months later threw Harry’s life somewhat off course—though that in itself was nothing new.

After Professor Slughorn had returned with Professor McGonagall and Madame Pomfrey— the people he had gone out to get—Harry himself was in turn sent to Professor Dumbledore. The man was, as usual, in his office and didn’t hesitate to put his work aside for a trip to the hospital wing to check up on Ron, possibly also to prepare for when Molly Weasley would inevitably descend in all her overprotective mother bear glory.

Just as Harry was about to follow the headmaster out, Fawkes called out to him with a strange trill resembling a whistle.

As it was clearly meant to do, it caught Harry’s attention, and he turned around to give the phoenix a questioning look. Fawkes responded by taking off from his perch and flying over to the desk where he started hovering in one spot, singing an upbeat melody all the while. The student translated the firebird’s behaviour as ‘follow me’ and saw no reason to refuse, though he was feeling the pressure in that he soon had to go check up on Ron as well.

Once Harry had joined Fawkes by the desk, the phoenix began clawing at one of the closed drawers mid-hover, interrupting his efforts occasionally to look pointedly at the Gryffindor. He needed to repeat this several times before Harry was convinced that Fawkes, as both a friend of Harry’s and the partner of the headmaster, had the right to ask for assistance in opening the indicated drawer.

Where Harry had expected something of Fawkes’ to occupy the drawer, an item of some sort that the headmaster had probably forgotten to return to the phoenix, it instead held just two things: a piece of parchment and a familiar golden ball.

The parchment held only two words in the headmaster’s distinctive loopy handwriting: ‘Harry’s Snitch’.

Fawkes wasted no time in swooping down and scooping up the little ball with his talons, catching the note it was halfway lying on along more by accident than by design. Harry’s feathery friend then circled the office just once before returning and launching the Snitch along with the note at the student who, being a seeker, couldn’t stop himself from automatically catching the projectile.

“Fawkes?” Harry had asked, confused on why the firebird would go through all the trouble only to hand the Snitch to him.

Fawkes trilled encouragingly, then landed on Harry’s shoulder in order to nudge his human friend’s hands more firmly around the Snitch. Harry translated this to ‘go on, take it’ and knew that the phoenix wouldn’t take no for an answer either way, so he just nodded to show he would go along with this.

“Okay,” he conceded. “If you’re sure.”

Fawkes sang a few happy notes by way of answer and ruffled his feathers first, then preened Harry’s hair to ruffle it too. The sixth year laughed and started petting the large bird that was still sitting comfortably on his shoulder, reflecting on how he seemed to have nothing but good relations when it came to avians.

Any post owl he had ever met had taken to him either immediately or soon, including Hedwig, Errol, Pig and the school owls, as had the few birds Harry had met that weren’t owls—like one certain fiery bird that was currently enjoying his attentions.

A short time later, when Harry had gotten around to pocket the Snitch (plus note) and close the open drawer, it was time to leave. Fawkes waved a goodbye with his tail when he sent Harry on his way, seemingly completely satisfied with the round of petting he’d gotten.

The Gryffindor couldn’t help but smile indulgently and promise he’d pet the bird again next time before hasting out of the office to the hospital wing. He would find himself unable to enter, made to wait alongside Hermione and Ginny until eight in the evening, then find Ron sleeping peacefully in one of the beds—his red-haired friend would be released in a few days’ time, together with Harry, who would manage to somehow get sent to the hospital wing himself within that same short time span.

Harry was just much too occupied with the strange new instincts that had begun to manifest more often with almost alarming frequency to seriously work on obtaining the memory he was asked to get. Even the obvious disappointment of the headmaster on his lack of both effort and progress by the time the next lesson came along did next to nothing to motivate him on that front.

Instead, he had taken to wandering the castle at night, testing his new sensitivity to the prevalent mix of magic that hung about Hogwarts. Before he first sensed the magic of the ring, Harry hadn’t noticed much of the magic that always saturated the air of the school, hadn’t known just how much there was of it, nor had he realised how many types of magic made up the potent mixture.

But now—now he could feel it, and he _marvelled_.

With every day that passed, his senses became clearer, more attuned to the magic, and it showed in Harry’s practical work—spells became easier, better and smoother for him to learn or to cast.

It was his many distractions and the ever-building pressure that held him back from noticeably improving, instead keeping his performance at the same level whilst requiring less and less effort on his part.

Although Harry’s newfound sensitivity was primarily based on feeling—he compared it to how people can feel the movements of the air around them and notice the differences when the currents change—the knowledge he gleaned was clear enough that the young wizard sometimes thought he could _see_ the flow of magic rather than only sense it.

The Gryffindor didn’t know whether the beautiful colours he at times saw from the corner of his eye were products of his imagination, or a new development of his mysterious new affinity with magic.

Harry suspected that Luna knew _something_ because she had taken to calling him ‘Little Death’ lately, though nobody, Harry himself included, understood why she would call him that instead of just straight out tell him he needed more rest.

Because that was what she meant, right?

The inner workings of Luna Lovegood’s world, as whacky and fascinating as they were to Harry, had to wait—the sixth-year Gryffindor had simply neither time nor energy to spare for more than a cursory glance each time she did or said something else that echoed with hidden meanings.

What Harry, purely out of necessity, _did_ make time for was keeping an eye on all the other uncanny happenings in his daily life—mainly the little things that he suddenly knew without reason or explanation.

Usually they were not very clear-cut, but they did add more knowledge to the situations Harry encountered and granted just that little bit more insight to matters. The first time had been about a month after his first private lesson with Dumbledore, when during breakfast Harry just _knew_ that a little Hufflepuff second year, who happened to sit near him at her own house table, was about to be sick.

Two days later, as he had predicted, she definitely didn’t look too well when he saw her sit down for lunch. Harry somehow just as accurately predicted when she would get better, and had—just to be sure—inconspicuously confirmed both of his predictions with the girl’s friend, despite seeing the evidence first-hand.

As was natural for him, Harry had informed both Ron and Hermione about the things he kept finding out, though he didn’t give them all the details—the scars from his childhood still ran too deep to trust them with everything he had on this yet another out-of-the-ordinary aspect of his life.

They were Harry’s closest friends and confidants, but that didn’t mean that Harry told them everything, every time, and it had nothing to do with either their reliability or lack thereof—it was all about Harry’s eternal lack of self-confidence.

Hermione, predictably, had reacted by researching everything she could that might be even the slightest bit related, all the while urging Harry to go tell an authority figure—McGonagall and Dumbledore being her most popular choices. Harry had—just as predictably—refused, mostly on the ground of the developments being not a problem and a private matter that was no one else’s business. He was adamant on not allowing the knowledge to spread further than his immediate friends.

Ron had simply listened until Harry was done explaining, and Hermione was done asking questions, then told him that it sounded like some kind of magical inheritance, an innate talent that had laid dormant until now. Some hereditary abilities were like that, apparently—or so Harry gathered from Ron’s description. A bit of jealousy could be seen in Ron’s eyes, but it was mild and Ron was able to keep a lid on it, so Harry graciously pretended not to have seen anything.

Despite Hermione’s familiar attempts to get him to confide in an adult and Ron’s petty jealousy, Harry was reminded exactly why they were friends, why he trusted them, when both of them supported him anyway—in their own ways.

Hermione started keeping a journal—covered in the strictest and most all-compassing scheme of privacy, anti-theft and anti-tampering spells she could find, and even some that Harry was pretty sure she legally shouldn’t know—in which she recorded all the cases in which Harry’s new ability had made itself known.

At the same time, entire pages of a notebook—put under the same heavy precautions as the journal—were rapidly being filled with Hermione’s notes on her observations, with even more space taken by her theories about what Harry’s ability was, why it was manifesting _now_ , where it came from and predictions on how it would grow and change from its current state. Just looking at the pages made Harry and Ron’s heads spin. They wouldn’t dare to have a look again after that one time.

Ron seemed to take it all in stride, and calmly took the time to come up with safe and diverse ways in which to test the possibilities—clearly having fun with the process of thinking them up. Whenever Harry was too worn out from _everything_ going on in his life, Ron would be there to distract him with chess, gobstones, exploding snap, flying, or he simply sent Harry to bed early and covered for the resulting absence.

Yes, they were a great team and Harry thought that if he didn’t already love them both dearly, he would’ve started to now.

With their support, he eventually got around to go after Slughorn’s true memory, though it took Harry a tiny dose of the Felix Felicis potion to succeed. The meeting he had with Professor Dumbledore directly afterwards put yet more burdens on Harry’s shoulders, but the young hero-to-be was only partly paying attention to the serious discussion on Voldemort’s horcruxes, the power of love and the prophecy that never stopped screwing with his life.

Harry’s mind was mostly on the wand, the ring and the cloak.

Like many more things he suddenly knew lately, Harry knew that the two items he didn’t yet have were gravitating towards him, and it likely wouldn’t be long before the ring and the wand fell into his hands.

What, exactly, the circumstances would be did not fall under the purview of this knowledge, and neither did Harry know what would happen next, once the three items had been brought together under his ownership.

All the parts and pieces Harry was aware of basically emphasised the inevitability of the entire thing—he was meant to wield the wand, carry the ring and wear the cloak; Harry was meant to own all three—and the most anyone could do was delay the moment Harry would at last hold all of them in his hands.

If there was one thing Harry felt by the end of the lesson, it was relief at finally knowing what he had to do to end Voldemort, how to end the continuing threat on his life—at least from that direction.

As for the supposed ‘power the Dark Lord knows not’, Harry wasn’t sure he agreed with Dumbledore on it being love. As much as love can accomplish, styling it as ‘at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than the forces of nature’ still sounded a tad farfetched to the sixteen-year-old—not to mention that he thought it a much too dramatic description.

He would be the first to admit that love was indeed ‘the most mysterious’, as the headmaster had put it, but somehow Harry felt that love was merely one weapon in his arsenal rather than the most important force to the exclusion of everything else.

His new instincts agreed with that view, but the Professor likely wouldn’t want to hear of it, so Harry said nothing on it and merely left for Gryffindor Tower once again with the one thing on his mind that he _did_ agree on with the aged transfiguration master.

Yes, there is a great deal of difference between being dragged in to face your destruction or walking in with your head held high.

Harry would make sure to remember these words, and live by them.

By the beginning of the next month, a new wind was blowing. It was a wind of change, of turning points, of moments that would decide the path to the future—and it made Harry’s senses go haywire.

Ron and Hermione did what they could to soothe him—separately when they were fighting with each other—but it didn’t seem to help much. Neville, Dean and Seamus too tried to help with what they perceived as an unusually severe case of restlessness, but had just as little luck in making a positive difference. All of Harry’s other friends, like Ginny, soon pitched in, again without success. Luna seemed to be the only one not noticing, though Harry thought it was more likely she saw the futility of trying to do what the others were already trying—and failing—all the time.

All that their well-meant efforts did was driving Harry to wander ever more through Hogwarts’ halls after curfew—and increasingly during the daytime as well.

Less than a week later, Harry was in the middle of his longest walk yet, with half his mind on the upcoming Gryffindor vs. Ravenclaw Quidditch match, when his senses told him to turn into a nearby corridor that he originally hadn’t planned to take.

The young wizard, being a creature of instinct by nature, had easily taken to his new ability because it _fit so well_ with his preferences, and by this time he was used to the unexpected insights, following them without worrying on their meaning or origin.

Harry went where his instinct guided him, up and down stairs or down halls as directed, until his awareness told him that the journeying was about to come to an end—for now.

His destination was close, just behind the door in front of him, a door the Gryffindor recognised.

It was the door of the first floor girls’ lavatory—the bathroom of Moaning Myrtle.

The sixth year had his invisibility cloak at hand in that moment—he had taken to carrying it along with him wherever he went since the beginning of the school year—thus, he took the cloak out from his pocket to cover himself with it, all the while relishing the familiar feelings of belonging, nostalgia and happiness, for now heedless of the uncomfortable fragment of wrongness.

A soft nudge of his subconscious was all Harry needed to enter the bathroom then, in the frame of mind that meant he could take anything thrown at him, accept them, work with them, and survive in spite of it all. In this state, he could encounter the most outlandish or outrageous things and wouldn’t so much as bat an eyelid.

Harry had raised survival to an art form and—needless to say—he was alive today because of this.

Harry would wonder later how events would have unfolded if he hadn’t had the added instincts of his then-unknown inheritance, and though he understood that the outcome couldn’t have been anything but _bad_ , he would never realise exactly what would have been if that single moment in the timeline eight months earlier had gone as originally intended.

The sight that met him was peculiar, to say the least—if Harry hadn’t been in full-on survival mode, he would’ve been bewildered and much more prone to making mistakes.

Draco Malfoy, resident Slytherin Ice Prince and all-round spoiled brat, was miserably hung over the sink in front of him, sobbing his heart out to the unresponsive, grimy, bathroom mirror. The blond had been too distraught to notice the opening of the door behind him and didn’t seem quite finished with his emotional breakdown for some time yet.

Harry remained standing in the doorway of the bathroom for a moment, unsure of what to do—and part of him couldn’t help wondering where Moaning Myrtle was, if not here in her usual haunt.

She had found out about Harry’s nightly promenades about halfway through the year and had since then regularly joined him on his walks. Myrtle had even said he’d inspired her, and proceeded to frequently take walks—or whatever they should be called in her case—of her own, more or less abandoning this very bathroom she used to reside in nearly all the time.

Wherever she was at that moment, it was not here.

Harry closed the door behind him when he fully stepped inside the bathroom, but didn’t move beyond that, watching his school rival in complete silence from under his invisibility cloak.

Malfoy didn’t hear the soft thump of the door hitting its frame, but still seemed to have sensed something, because a few moments later he turned and looked warily around the bathroom, searching for whatever was amiss.

The grey eyes swept once, twice over Harry’s position without registering his presence, but the third time Malfoy reacted as if he saw that there was somebody standing there—the Slytherin then turned completely towards the invisible visitor, looking even paler than the Gryffindor had ever seen him.

Harry wouldn’t find out until later, but the event happened to coincide with the first surge of his still-equalising magic—yet to fully adjust to his newly awakening powers—which caused it to hang about him like a veil of otherworldly power, and Malfoy apparently could see or feel that, somewhat, even if he couldn’t spot its owner.

Like the tides, this part of Harry was heavily influenced by the phases of the sun and moon, but that stuff too Harry would only come to know much later, when he would think back on everything that had happened and work out why and how it had come together like this.

Draco Malfoy knew, without a doubt, that whatever it was that had deigned to come see him was _old_ and _powerful_ , as was confirmed by the very nature of its magic that could be felt leaking into the air.

As a member of an old wizarding family, Draco was taught about the old magics and the ancient Gods—because his parents would not have allowed him to step foot in Hogwarts without a thorough understanding of the power they hold—and how to deal with them, should he ever come upon one.

The pure-blood didn’t know which of the many ancient forces had come to the bathroom, but he didn’t care much beyond the fact that _there was one_ right there and it _might_ deign to speak with him if Draco approached it in just the right way.

He _relished_ the incredible chance he was given to escape the nightmare he had found himself in since last summer.

Now it fell to Draco to drive a good enough bargain to win its interest and protection, for the right price—one he hoped would not be too steep.

So, instead of attacking, as Draco would have done if another student had found him here in his moment of weakness, he fully faced the being—or where he thought it was, based on where the magic was originating from—and sank to his knees in reverence, greeting the unknown visitor with the customary deep bow reserved for welcoming any of the old forces.

He did not speak to it and refrained from making eye contact—regardless of the fact that the being was still invisible—as was protocol. He hands were laid on top of his thighs, palms up, to signify his approach was peaceful.

Sat like that, Draco waited to be addressed first.

The God approached him at last, Draco sensed, and came to a stop right before him, but with enough distance between them that it could not be reached by the wizard’s hand or wand, unable to be stopped in time should it decide to leave prematurely.

Another few moments passed before it spoke, and as Draco had hoped, it addressed him personally.

“Name your request.”

Its voice was deep, weighted by eons of magic, its shroud of magic seemingly growing bigger until it resembled the drawn curtains of a stage, fluttering in a non-existing wind.

“I ask for a boon, oh Great One,” Draco spoke solemnly, pausing a moment to gather his words and courage to express what he wanted in clear yet respectful sentences.

“I, Draco Malfoy, ask protection for myself and three others.

I ask for the safety of Lucius Malfoy; who sired me, and Narcissa Malfoy née Black; who birthed me.

I ask guidance, shielding and deliverance for Severus Snape; my mentor, teacher and protector, kin not in blood but in thought and deed.

I plead with you, o Great One, to grant me this one boon.”

Gods do not care for human reasons or excuses and Draco wisely did not try to give any. Instead, he tensely waited for the being’s verdict, silently hoping and praying for success.

Harry didn’t have room for shock when Malfoy had fallen to his knees before him, and he had closed the distance between them almost on autopilot—a part of him wanting to see what would happen next.

The entire procedure was uncannily familiar to him, uncomfortably different from the usual knowledge, though Harry was quite sure no one had ever treated him like this before.

For several moments he had many vague impressions of other people sitting in that exact same way superimposed on his vision of the kneeling Malfoy—down to the position of the hands and the bowed head. Harry had no idea where the many images came from, and they luckily didn’t last long enough to disorient him or he’d be screwed in more ways than one.

But despite his misgivings, Harry had always very much lived his life on the edge and was also a firm believer of ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’—perhaps when it came to this part of his life, he was indeed as much of typical foolhardy Gryffindor as Professor Snape had always accused him of being—so his hesitation lasted only moments before he took the plunge.

The unknown memories took over to guide Harry’s behaviour, matched them with what Malfoy surely expected of him. Their influence made his magic flare and grow heavier, infused even his words with power.

And then Harry barely held onto his calm mind when the other young man spoke of protection he wished for on behalf of himself and his family—the Gryffindor too absorbed by the desperation of the words and the sudden insights they brought, the depressing conclusions he was forced to draw.

The Slytherin was clearly at his wit’s end, Harry hadn’t even needed to see the earlier breakdown to spot the signs in Malfoy’s face—it could be seen in the way the pure-blood stood before and kneeled now. The blond’s very stance spoke of his endless fatigue from constantly working, of some unmovable weigh on his shoulders, of dead threats that just _wouldn’t go away_ , more than likely not even on completion of whatever it was he was ordered to do, of nights full of nightmares that wouldn’t even stop when daybreak came.

All in all, Malfoy had no more hope left beyond the bit he pinned on whatever he thought Harry to be.

A new section of Harry’s psyche awakened right then, a somewhat coldly detached part that knew exactly what needed to be done.

Harry let it lead.

“All things come with a price,” he intoned in warning, but didn’t ask the Slytherin aloud whether he was prepared to pay that price, certain that the message would be received.

“Yes. I will pay the price required,” answered Malfoy decisively, going even as far as lifting his head and giving a firm nod, liquid fire now blazing in his grey eyes.

Harry let go of the sides of the invisibility cloak, and with him no longer holding it in place the fabric immediately began sliding down, held back finally by the clasp of the collar that had somehow closed itself snugly around his throat. In the end, Harry wore the cloak like he would any other, draped over his back and shoulders, the hood by this time fallen off his head—revealing to the kneeling wizard just who had been with him in the bathroom al this time.

Said student didn’t react to this unveil beyond the tightening of his face and a sharp intake of breath, but the combination of shock and hope apparently didn’t stop him from intently watching his classmate’s face—looking as if he would bolt out the door given half the chance and enough incentive.

The Gryffindor slowly extended a hand and laid it on Malfoy’s chest, right where the heart was located—even through the clothing Harry felt it pumping away, pace quickened by emotions, fatigue and stress, the strong rhythm nevertheless indicative of an excellent health.

Harry didn’t spare the entire situation much more thought, and instead started calling upon his new magic, the part that was heavy and old and dark—yet not tainted like the magic of members of Voldemort’s club had a strong tendency to be. This went along with manipulating the almost endless energy of his surroundings—Hogwarts’ mix of ambivalent magic, so potent it could nearly be called alive.

The magic of the two sources gathered in his free hand to be prepared for the next step, and Harry kept careful attention on the blend of magic, ready to bring it over to his other hand once it had the right consistency.

Potter’s face was a blank slate, completely, utterly unreadable for once. For Draco it was a very inconvenient timing, as normally Potter wore most of his emotions on his face and if there had ever been a time he had need of it, it was now.

Still, for all that he hadn’t known it was Potter, Draco wasn’t all that surprised, really. Potter had always been a great mystery, and had somehow made it a speciality to survive what shouldn’t be survivable. It truly didn’t sound all that weird that he was secretly a being of old power that therefore couldn’t be killed by ordinary means in the first place.

Either Potter’s supposed magnanimity was no lie, or he had much more snake in him than anyone could’ve known and needed Draco for his own plans, but in either case Draco was in no position to complain—because he had gotten just what he’d asked for.

Potter’s hand resting over his heart and the momentary biting cold that followed was proof of it.

Draco would find a mark there later that day, sharp black lines over pale skin, the shape resembling some sort of plume or a stylised flame, with many overlapping parts, in the style that the muggles referred to as tribal. He would run his fingers over it and not feel any difference between the marked skin and the unadorned parts of his body—if he closed his eyes, Draco could not tell where the lines ran or where they stopped—unlike the Dark Mark, which always burned, and felt like raised skin under his fingers.

It was a mark of a deal made and sealed, a visible proof of the exchange between the mortal carrying it and the being to whom it belonged—such marks tended to be unique, each used solely by a single being to identify itself with. The symbols went by many alternative names, a few variations of which were glyph, seal, sigil, veve, stave, crest, brand, emblem and insignia.

“You shall not go before your time. Neither shall your kin,” the Gryffindor spoke up in that same, ancient voice he had used so far throughout the entire exchange.

Draco snapped to attention at the words and found Potter retracting his hand and giving the Slytherin a single slow, deep, regal nod. Then the intensity of the magic lessened for a moment, softening his face and voice to something more human when he spoke again.

“Take care, for this protection is not absolute. It has flaws—and you should be wary of them.”

The recipient hurried to give a formal bow in thanks for the unexpected advice that the giver was never under any obligation to give, then rose to his feet. Potter had turned his back to Draco and was already gripping the sides of his invisibility cloak again to draw it back over himself when the blond found his voice back and called after his classmate, the question coming out tinged with an edge of desperation.

“Wait, Potter! Just—what are you?”

Harry carefully took note of the ‘what’ Malfoy used, instead of the ‘who’ Harry had been expecting on some unconscious level. It denoted that Malfoy didn’t think that Harry had lied about his name or otherwise falsified his identity—a fact that the Gryffindor had to give his school rival credit for—which left only the puzzle of _what_ Harry was.

Unfortunately, Harry did not have an answer to give, as of yet.

The magic around him had dispersed at this point, returning his inner state to normal, making him feel human again. Less… otherworldly. Harry threw the other wizard a part teasing, part melancholic smile over his shoulder.

“I’m not sure yet, Malfoy,” he said, the serious tone of the words belying the expression he wore. “I’ll let you know when I find out, alright?”

Before Malfoy could stop him Harry went out the door, pulling his cloak back on to disappear from view.

It was not too much later that one certain potions professor decided to show himself to his star student, having witnessed much of the puzzling exchange between his most hated student and his most favoured student—both of whom he had incidentally, for entirely different reasons and in two sets of completely different circumstances, vowed to protect.

Never had he thought that a run-in between the two of them could end in anything but violence—which had been mostly verbal for now, but steadily shifting towards the physical variety since last summer—and with tensions running high, Severus had been on edge the entire year, waiting for the inevitable moment that pandemonium would descend.

Now the moment had been there—and events hadn’t even gone _near_ the predicted route. In hindsight, Severus should have expected it; Potter never did things by halves, and in addition to that he had this utter inability to conform to any kind of rules in general, laws of nature in specific.

Although Severus Snape was insanely curious about the whole thing, he wouldn’t find an opportunity to find out more for a long time to come—duty called, after all, and right now taking care of young Mr Malfoy was more important than prying the non-school related dealings out of either of his students’ minds.

Outside the door that Professor Snape had ‘forgotten’ to fully close, still invisible, Harry gave a tiny satisfied smile at the confirmation that Malfoy was in good hands, before leaving that floor altogether in order to continue with his walk for whatever stretch of time he had left to do so.

With the Malfoy-issue now dealt with, Harry was able to somewhat calm down, though not completely— _never completely_ , what with most of not all of the problems in his life being of the life-threatening kind—because at the very least he had now one problem less. Sure, with this Harry also had a responsibility more, but between the myriad threats on his well-being and the equally numerous responsibilities on his shoulders, he knew to which side he’d rather add.

Now with the urgency gone, it had left the anticipation that had been mixed in to continue riling Harry up by itself, but the itching that felt like something was crawling under his skin had stopped, making things moderately better. He was still full of nervous energy, but it was clear to all that Harry was no longer as jumpy as before, and he could concentrate better now.

The insomnia had also lessened significantly, though Harry instead began having strange dreams ( _again_ ) that were more… neutral in nature compared to what he was used to.

His usual dreams had a tendency to come in three flavours:

Happy ones—the rarest type of all dreams in the life of Harry Potter—the sort that surrounded him in a bubble of happiness for an entire day upon waking, and gave him the kind of joy that could power his strongest patronus.

Nightmares—those were either a collection of his worst memories or a kind of eldritch mash-up made from his deepest fears.

Visions—starring Voldemort, torture, Nagini or any combination thereof, which always had him wake in agony in one way or another.

These new dreams were not happy ones, they were definitely not nightmares and neither were they visions—though Harry still had to say that his current dreams resembled visions most of all.

No, Harry dreamt of a dark place that felt like home, of a throne room that often got visitors, of a maze—bigger than anything he had ever seen, or even heard of—that was _his_ ground, _his_ domain.

His world.

With every night that passed, Harry’s understanding of that world grew, until he knew it like the back of his hand and, in spite of never having set foot there physically, he would’ve been able sketch the complete lay-out blindfolded had anyone convinced him to.

When the dreams had just started their contents had still been vague, and that hadn’t made Harry feel at ease about this development, to the point that he considered following Hermione’s default advice this once. In the end, he had tentatively submitted to what his instincts had told him, namely, that it was both nothing dangerous and something that was necessary—which was soon confirmed, when the dreams began showing more substance.

He couldn’t even say he had been disappointed on their usefulness, because frankly, aside from the insight into that semi-dark, now-familiar realm, he was also beginning to understand the purpose of _everything_ abnormal that had happened in his life.

Harry was still barely scratching the surface, and already he felt overwhelmed by the knowledge.

But, as was his style, he shouldered it and moved on regardless.

By the end of the month, Malfoy had secretly met with Harry one more time to explain what Voldemort had tasked him to do and how the unwilling student-turned-Death Eater had gone about making it possible. The Malfoy heir had been submissive, fidgeting uncharacteristically throughout the entire meeting, but his snobbish pure-blood upbringing turned out to be an advantage in this case—despite the pressure of facing someone that had once been an enemy, a fellow human, but had turned out to be something powerful of unknown origin that now ensured his safety, the Slytherin had refused to shrink back and cower under Harry’s power.

Harry liked that.

He _really_ liked this new side of Malfoy, especially the unexpected courage he displayed.

For once the mini aristocrat had been perfectly polite, always careful not to anger Harry—whom Malfoy apparently thought was some kind of God. Harry had an inkling that his classmate might be onto something with that theory, but he couldn’t tell for sure yet how close the Slytherin had gotten to the truth.

Just a few more weeks of dreams left until he had the answer, Harry knew, and until then he could only speculate or guess, not knowing for sure.

At the mention of Snape’s unbreakable vow and an anxious look of grey eyes filled with bitter resignation Harry was able to honestly tell the other student that there was no need to worry. The Gryffindor had already known about the vow for quite some time, and with accepting Malfoy’s deal had come responsibility for protecting the Malfoy family and the double spy—which meant that he couldn’t allow Snape to be killed by that vow or anything else—so Harry had dealt with that at his earliest opportunity, which had happened to be the very next time he had Defence Against the Dark Arts since the meeting in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.

Although Snape had been watching Harry warily throughout the entire lesson, the student had been able to mess with the bindings of the vow without the teacher noticing, significantly weakening the web of magic that enforced the terms.

Professor Snape would find out at some point that creating and exploiting loopholes was much easier than he’d ever thought with such a strict vow. Harry trusted that the master of everything underhanded would be able to save himself with this, because this was all he could do about the vow in his current state.

As a side effect of Harry’s developing sense for magic and his new instincts, Snape was unable to sneak up on him any longer. The man was covered with too much magic to escape Harry’s notice, and it made the professor the equivalent of a beacon among fireflies in comparison with the rest of Hogwarts’ population.

It was a testament to Severus Snape’s skills that he was a master of stealth and espionage while carrying that magical mass of sizable proportions that Harry had yet to find something as a proper comparison to.

Even more interesting was the make-up of the many-faced wizard’s load—in addition to the man’s own magic, professor Snape also had the taint of the Dark Mark, a variety of oaths that had likely to do with his membership of the Order, several more bindings that were connected to whatever he did when spying, vestiges of magical torture, remnants of both the dark magic he practiced and the lighter varieties he also used, numerous breaks in the general flow of the magic that indicated hidden talents powerful enough to impact his magic, traces of the more powerful ingredients he handled, a distinct tinge of the mind magic he had mastered, imprints belonging to his most extreme experiences among which were many magical equivalents of scars that signified near-death experiences, and to top it all off he carried the strands of quite a few unbreakable vows tangled together in one big web.

All the types of invading outside magic plus the influences of the Potions Master’s choices and activities had turned the magic into a blend of almost everything at once. Harry had actually needed a few minutes to process that overload of information when his senses had first allowed him to observe the magic of the dour man, because everyone else’s magic he’d sensed up until that point had been more or less homogeneous to varying degrees. He’d more than once mentally compared Snape’s magic to an irregular kaleidoscope pattern, careful not to ever mention any of his observations out loud for fear of sounding like a maniac high on pixie dust.

All interesting properties of the magic aside, the tangled vows had posed Harry quite a challenge in loosening the hold of the most recent—or so Harry assumed—vow that the wizard had made to Narcissa in protection of her son. To get around the problem Harry had ended up plucking at the entire web instead of fruitlessly trying to affect just that one vow he might not even correctly identify. The rest of the vows had therefore also been forcibly pulled from their holds in the process, but whether Snape would notice the difference was a question on its own.

With the details Malfoy gave him, Harry made plans to counter Voldemort’s plans and prepared the members of the DA for when ol’ Tom would arrange their annual end-of-year get-together. The young wizard didn’t look forward to that, because he knew that this time was not yet the moment he would be able to send snake-face off to the afterlife—which meant that the most he could do was hold the bastard off and hopefully limit the casualties as much as possible.

Dumbledore was discreetly informed by Harry of the nearing confrontation—so that he too could make preparations—with the knowledge passed off as information obtained through more visions.

All that was left at that point, was to wait.

Then, on the last day of the school year, a large-scale fight suddenly broke out on Hogwarts’ ground floor involving several groups of higher years of all houses. Harry and his friends happened to be quite near the disturbance, but they still needed some time to get there to help, even at a run.

The mass of fighting students had by that time swallowed up nearby people, expanding to a multitude of smaller fights in one widespread area, even up the stairs and out the doors to the grounds—like a miniature battlefield. In the still-spreading chaos, a party of Death Eaters invaded via the pair of vanishing cabinets and dove straight into the fray, turning it into a full pandemonium.

That triggered the members of the DA into action, closely followed by the teachers, and it rose the chaos to another impossibly higher level.

Albus Dumbledore was among the professors that had reacted to the appearance of the Death Eaters and he refused to let the pesky little problem of his cursed wand hand hold him back from protecting the students under his care. The veritable old headmaster had hoped to be on the trail of one of Tom’s horcruxes around this time, but the disappearance of one particular trinket from one of the drawers of his office desk had derailed his plans by quite a bit. Fawkes strangely didn’t seem concerned at all about whoever had possibly made off with it, so Albus had wondered if he shouldn’t let things be for now.

Still, he hoped that the fighting would soon be over—dare he say it—one way or another, because he was truly getting _too old_ for this romping about with Tom and his playmates.

Headmaster Dumbledore was long since ready for the Next Great Adventure, had even planned on dying when his death would do most good, but looking at the present situation, he supposed that it would likely take a while longer before he would leave this earth.

Severus was being a dear lately and seemed to have set his sights on creating a true cure for the flesh-eating curse that had so unfortunately blacked Albus’ hand. With all the considerable genius of this particular Potions Master focussed on this task, Albus had no doubt that his chances of dying from the curse were rapidly dropping from slim to none with every day that passed.

Although Albus was glad to see Harry take up the mantle of prophesized saviour seriously, he worried that the dear boy was still not ready—in fact, the boy seemed to be rather preoccupied with more than just the hard road ahead, if Albus was not mistaken.

On the other hand, boys will always be boys, and he couldn’t begrudge Harry his teenage adventures. The sweet boy had missed out on a lot of life after all, and would possibly never quite get another opportunity to experience normal life once the next war truly started up again. Of all the people that Albus had known, dear Harry was perhaps the one whose continued life lighted Albus’ heart most, yet it pained him greatly to know that the odds of the child surviving the coming war in its entirety were quite small, and there was almost nothing Albus could do to raise Harry’s chances without dramatically decreasing many others’ chances of survival at the same time.

The best Albus could do was prepare the boy for his gruelling task, bit by bit, so as not to overwhelm him or torment him longer than necessary with the terrible knowledge—and pray that it would be enough, that the dear child would overcome the iniquity of his young life and live on to attain happiness.

To this day, the headmaster considered it one of his greatest failures that he couldn’t protect Harry properly from having to sacrifice so much. It ranked right among failing his sweet sister Adriana, taking far too long before finally setting out to stop Gellert, the many mistakes he made when it came to dealing with Tom, and the way he neglected to intervene in young Severus life until it was far too late.

Preoccupied with his thoughts, the headmaster was a split-second too slow in reacting to his next attacker and it was only thanks to his battle reflexes that the old wizard was still able to soften the blow of the curse he was hit with though it wasn’t enough to completely keep his equilibrium.

In the moment he needed to regain his balance another opponent struck from behind with a volley of curses—of which the only ones to hit their target were an arm-snapper that doubled as a disarming curse, a bone-breaker and an expulso curse—that ended with the now injured Transfiguration Master being sent flying into the nearest wall hard enough to lose consciousness, despite already being halfway there due to the pain of his accumulated wounds.

His attackers were just standing there, doing nothing but stare at the downed professor, apparently disbelieving of the fact that they had just succeeded in dealing some serious damage to their master’s greatest enemy.

Well, it was not for long, because it was right then that Harry pounced on the hapless Death Eaters, disarming, stunning and binding them in quick succession.

Seeing as the Defeater of Grindelwald was out of commission for the time being, Harry cast a protective shield with a long duration over the downed professor and picked up the man’s dropped wand for safekeeping—ignoring the senses screaming at him to _keep the wand and not give it back_.

The sixth-year Gryffindor put the extra wand safely away in the wand holster he wore on his arm—he figured that it was the best place to store it for now because wouldn’t need the holster for his own wand until the battle was over.

And so the miniature war continued, between DA, student sympathisers of Voldemort, regular students, teachers, Order members, Death Eaters, a werewolf (Fenrir Greyback to be precise, since Remus Lupin hadn’t been able to join in), and—when they _finally_ got around to arriving—the aurors. It was only thanks to knowing beforehand when, why and how the party of Voldemort’s lackeys would attack—though nobody had foreseen the Death Eaters-in-training among the students to act before the main force struck—that the fighting was put down so relatively soon.

In the end, a lot of damage was dealt to the castle and the grounds, and there were many people with grievous injuries, but no deaths at all, thankfully—though there were only a few minor Death Eaters caught since the rest had escaped or had been taken away by their colleagues.

Curiously, Voldemort himself had not shown up at all.

Harry thought the entire thing was a tad too anti-climax for his tastes, then had a moment of internal hysterics because the previous thought had had an undercurrent of indifference for the people involved, which was a development that alarmed him greatly. It was a clear sign that Harry’s mental health was slipping—if it wasn’t already utterly shot, of course.

What was worse, the thought had felt entirely natural, as if it was expected of him to feel this way, and for the duration of it Harry had had the mindset of seeing humanity as a whole as tiny beings far beneath him that had no other purpose than to provide him with entertainment.

Youthful and skilled at fighting he was, Harry was a pacifist at heart which made his sudden apathy to death, destruction and mayhem in general a worrying notion, even if the likely origin—a life filled with defying death on a regular basis _was not in any way conducive_ to a peaceful mind—was entirely natural.

Had his unconventional childhood and near-lethal school years finally succeeded in corrupting him to think like that?

Was it his acclimatisation to the rollercoaster of danger, also known as Harry Potter’s daily life, speaking?

Harry had no idea—and could only hope his mental state wouldn’t degenerate further.

Despite the insistent resistance of his instincts, Harry had still gone to see the headmaster the day after.

There had still been many people recovering in the hospital wing—even with the majority of the injured from the battle having been sent over to St. Mungo’s—and among the patients who had been left in Madame Pomfrey’s care was Dumbledore himself.

The Gryffindor student had thought it would be a simple thing; hand the wand over and be done, but as he should have expected even such a little thing became far more complicated when it was him it happen to.

“Keep the wand,” Dumbledore had said, with a somewhat morose shake of his head that shook his white beard along with it.

“Why?” Harry had asked. “Isn’t this wand yours?”

“This wand has no true owner in the same sense that all other wands do. I have won its allegiance in battle, several decades ago—and I have now lost its loyalty in the battle yesterday. It will no longer work for me.”

“Then why give it to me?”

“Because I suspect you are its owner now, through your victory over the individuals that have forcibly retired me from battle for some time to come.” Dumbledore had given Harry a small soft smile then, although his famous eye twinkle had still been absent.

“Try it,” he had urged the student on. “If you are still in doubt, try using this wand to cast magic. I guarantee that you’ll know right away whether it has accepted you or not.”

Despite his words and actions, Harry had already been aware of the wand preferring him as its wielder and he had never had any doubts as to whether it would work for him—it was only his code of honour that had demanded of the young man that he return what didn’t belong to him.

But with the permission of headmaster Dumbledore received, he had no more scruples about taking the wand for himself.

Harry had eventually tried using the wand, spurred on by the older wizard’s encouragements, and found himself simultaneously unsurprised that it obediently did as bid and startled about how well it seemed to fit his magic.

In fact, the wand had responded just like his holly wand—the wand that had _exclusively chosen Harry_ —its magic flowing in ways that Harry had likened to the eagerness of an excited child. The familiar hum had been no longer something he felt whenever the wand was nearby, but had become a constant, almost physically audible sound in the back of his mind.

Dumbledore’s eyes had been twinkling when he had seen the evidence of Harry’s mastery over the famed Wand of Destiny first-hand and the professor had asked the younger Gryffindor if the student had heard the story of the unbeatable wand before.

Naturally, Harry had not.

Professor Dumbledore had smiled at that, and had then proceeded to tell the legend of the Elder Wand—the very wand lying innocently in Harry’s lap—in a manner reminiscent of how a grandfather would entertain his young grandson with historic tales before bed.

Harry had had a marvellous time listening to the story and though neither the ring nor the cloak had been mentioned at all, it had still been quite informative. All in all, the student left the hospital wing feeling more at rest than he had in a long while.

And so one Harry Potter took the much-coveted Elder Wand with him to Privet Drive when what was to be his very last summer there began.

Initially, everything went just like any other summer; all of Harry’s belongings—magical or not, though the vast majority was, of course, magical—were locked in the cupboard under the stairs, while Harry was sent upstairs and locked into the room he had never stopped thinking of as Dudley’s second bedroom.

Hedwig wasn’t very happy at being forced to stay in her cage again, but when Harry had tried to have her spend the summer at Ron’s or Hermione’s she had adamantly refused by pecking her human’s hand open until he had conceded.

Apparently, between flying free for the summer or looking after her human, she preferred the latter.

It was a lucky thing that Harry was able to let her out at night without riling his relatives up.

That normalcy, detested yet preferred as it was, didn’t last, because a few days into the summer Kingsley Shacklebolt and Arthur Weasley suddenly made an unannounced visit to Privet Drive. They tried their hardest to impress upon the Dursleys that come Harry’s seventeenth birthday, the wards on the house would come down—which meant that they would no longer offer any protection—and that Voldemort was likely to attack the house the second it became possible to do so.

The Dursleys, on top of being muggles, were Harry Potter’s relatives, which made them especially desirable _vulnerable_ targets—increasing the risks exponentially.

Somehow, both adult wizards were able to convince the muggle family to go along with the Order’s plan to hide them away at a safe house for the time being, unexpectedly aided by Dudley’s remarks of going alone if his parents wouldn’t come.

Despite the explanation of the risk they ran and would run when Harry’s minority status would end, and the variation of witness protection they would be put in before the end of summer, the elder Dursleys didn’t seem all that worried, all things considered.

What the elder Dursleys _did_ experience was unsettlement, which made their behaviour volatile—Vernon kept changing his mind on whether to pack or not after all—but the dark-haired teen knew it could’ve been much worse. He supposed that things could’ve been different—with a lot of verbal blow-ups courtesy of his uncle and constant shrill sessions of swear-at-my-freak-nephew favoured by his aunt, for example—had the battle of some week earlier turned out much more crippling to the wizarding population than it had been.

No, Harry would not protest—it could always be worse. He would take everything as it came.

Harry had been dumbfounded when the day after the visit of the wizards, Vernon had suddenly thundered up the stairs, yanked the door to Harry’s bedroom open and hurled his nephew’s school trunk into the room with all the force he could muster, then slammed the door closed before stomping off—all without a word.

Not bothering with keeping up with his uncle’s temper, Harry hadn’t wasted a moment to make the most of the unexpected opportunity, which meant that during the first few days of having his stuff within arm’s reach, he had cleaned his trunk properly for the first time ever; sifting through all his possessions and ordering all the things he owned into piles of usable, unusable and necessary.

The next couple of days, Harry then had done all his assignments from Hogwarts—just so he wouldn’t have to fend off Hermione when he saw her again.

By that time his aunt and uncle had gotten used to the idea of being in danger, of having to hide under magical protection before the school year would start again, and threat or no threat, they eventually _insisted_ on having Harry ‘pull his own weight’—as they had always liked to call it—by starting to set chores again.

It was nothing new, Harry was completely used to this treatment. He had endured worse during the past summers and the ten full years of life in this house before that, though the current situation couldn’t compare to any period of his life at the Dursleys’ before.

When the lockdown on his room had come to an end, Harry got called downstairs for only the second time that summer, and then got sent off immediately with a list of chores.

As usual, the many tasks he had to complete before the day’s end would take him about all day to do, even with nearly uninterrupted work. The activities of cleaning, gardening, painting and cooking were done with the ease of long familiarity, and allowed Harry’s thoughts to drift while his body worked on autopilot.

That was why it took Harry until his fourth job of the day was finished before he noticed that something was off.

On the kitchen table the full lunch that Harry had cooked to perfection had just been laid out by the resident wizard and he’d also just finished cleaning up the cooking implements that he’d used. It was when he turned back to the table to check that he hadn’t forgotten anything, which happened to be the same moment that both male Dursleys chose to perform their usual meal stampede into the kitchen, that they saw the unexpected additions to the settings.

A dark silvery shroud hung over the back of one chair, eerily blowing in a breeze that none of the residents could feel.

Next to a dish of steaming potatoes a small golden ball laid innocently on the tablecloth, almost as if posing as decoration for the meal.

Finally, at the head of the table, a stick of darkish old wood had taken the place of the knife next to the plate, which had banished that particular utensil to the other side of the plate to join the fork.

The invisibility cloak, the Snitch and the wand of elder.

Harry was _positive_ that he hadn’t seen them since he put them away in his trunk a few days ago, so why hadn’t they _stayed_ there?

While Harry was still contemplating the implications of the items showing up in the manner they did, Petunia had joined them in the kitchen and seen the unwelcome magical tools. In response to his wife’s shouts about getting the filth away, Vernon had roughly collected the three objects and shoved them into his nephew’s hands, bodily ejecting the wizard from the room with the follow-up movement.

The teen hadn’t wasted his breath with protesting that he hadn’t eaten yet, and had ascended the stairs to put his armload away in its proper place, hoping that this event had drained the supply of surprises for this summer.

A pointless wish it was, because there was yet more to come.

After having swept the floor he found the items on the living room table, arranged into a circle.

During the mowing of the lawn, the three objects popped up haphazardly across the grass, which Harry didn’t notice until he tripped over the cloak.

Buying groceries meant being handed the wand, cloak and Snitch separately by salesclerks who were apparently unaware that what they gave their customer was not in any way part of the supplies he wanted to buy.

The most memorable occasion was when Harry was painting the fence, ran out of paint and upon opening the next can of paint, found it empty except for the Snitch lying inside. When the lid was put back on after he had taken out the unusual content it clanged like he’d heard vending machines do. Subsequent attempts of re-opening, emptying and re-closing the can produced the cloak, then the wand and at last the paint he’d been looking for in the first place.

When the long day was finally over, Harry returned to his room to find the cloak spread out on his bed with both the Snitch and wand on top of it. The ball laid exactly in the centre of the cloth, and the wand rested just above that, the end of its handle nearly touching the Snitch and the tip pointing towards the hood of the cloak.

The wizard sighed, leant against the doorway for a bit, and was sorely tempted to take a moment to cry.

He went to sleep that night wondering why he wasn’t allowed to even have his last summer at the Dursleys’ in a peaceful manner.

Waking the next morning with the cloak draped over him, the wand snugly pressed between his torso and the bed in a way that was somehow reminiscent of a hug—he noted it was also conveniently positioned close to where his right hand rested—and the Snitch glittering on his pillow proved to Harry that the trouble was not over yet.

He no longer had the energy to protest that the insistent artefacts should stay where he put them, just released a long breath of irritation and packed the three annoying things away before he hurried down to make breakfast.

Over the next few days the objects never failed to magically appear at whatever place Harry was. They followed him through the entire house, at all hours of the day and even beyond the ward boundaries—Harry tried not to venture out too often, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped.

The unsettling part was that they never appeared while someone could see it—they _were just there_ whenever Harry (or anyone else) turned around. His sensitivity to magic didn’t help at all with tracking their movements because of the wards around the property—everything was alight with the magic of the wards, effectively concealing any other magical tracks of individual sources in the house, including Harry himself and any other of his magical belongings that were imbued with magic to function.

If it were possible, the three items were getting ever more energetic with trailing after Harry like kicked puppies. At one point Harry though he caught a undercurrent to their magic that he would’ve interpreted as ‘sulking’ if it had belonged to a living being.

By this time, he didn’t know what to do with all of this and his mind just shut down on all the weird stuff in his life—even for one as used to impossible things happening one after another on a regular basis as Harry Potter this was simply _too much_ to cope with.

He simply grew increasingly desensitised to the mess.

Over time, the three things started popping up in ever crazier places and Harry got the impression that they _really_ didn’t like his aunt and uncle.

For example, the wand seemed to have found a preference for tumbling out of cabinets and from above in general, more often than not hitting Vernon on the way down.

The cloak was more passive-aggressive, which meant that it usually just happened to lay in the way of either Vernon or Petunia and tripped them up. Another favoured tactic was to flutter down right in the face of either of the aforementioned muggles.

The Snitch was actually rather passive in comparison to its fellows, and if it were a person Harry would think of it as rather vain, with the way it always positioned itself in a well-seen spot to be admired.

Add to all of this that Dudley’s behaviour towards Harry was decidedly different than Harry was used to and the madness was complete.

To expand on the previous statement: his cousin was actively trying to treat Harry somewhat decently—a development that bewildered Harry like nothing else ever had before.

In fact, his fat, spoiled cousin was trying to reach out to Harry, if the wizard read the little clumsy gestures correctly.

It wasn’t much in the beginning, just a _tiny_ change in Dudley’s behaviour that made interaction between the cousins just that bit easier on the black-haired teen’s part—it mainly consisted of Dudley stopping to make Harry’s chores harder than they needed to be.

Then, before Harry knew it, the nasty comments and physical hits were somehow gone from their exchanges as if they had never existed, replaced by strained yet oddly peaceful conversations that struggled to last longer than a few stilted sentences.

Harry never ceased to be unbalanced by the whole thing.

For his part, Dudley tried his hardest not to be unnerved by the trio of magical artefacts that followed his cousin around. He jumped with every discovery of the items’ latest appearance, but visibly restrained himself from running.

Over time, the youngest Dursley began to hand Harry the items whenever he found them, carrying them with care the way you would handle delicate pieces made of fragile glass. He seemed to be an odd mixture of scared and excited whenever he touched the wand, Snitch or cloak, but it clearly didn’t faze him enough to stop.

Eventually that kind of interaction sort-of became the new normal for the both of them—it took a while, though—but not long after they had reached that point Dudley, yet again, went a step further.

He began distracting his parents when they started on at Harry.

Vernon had gotten more and more worked up about the ‘freakish, abnormal rubbish’ that kept appearing every time he turned around. He’d at first tried to break the wand, tear the cloak and crush the golden ball before throwing it all out with the garbage, but that proved to be much harder than he’d expected.

The wand had resisted being snapped to such a degree that it took Vernon over two hours to get it done and had wound up hurting himself badly enough that he had needed medical attention for half-torn arm tendons. On the other hand, the Snitch absolutely refused to be flattened—or even scratched—with any kind of tool.

The cloak didn’t reject the damage and got torn to shreds, but that didn’t matter in the end because all three still turned up again wherever Harry was—in perfect condition.

Once Vernon had figured out that any attempt at destroying the three objects was doomed to fail he had started to vent his temper on Harry once again, but now that Dudley was prepared to shield his younger cousin, Harry often got away without having to face his uncle blowing up again.

Now Harry just shrugged at the observations, figuring that Dudley must be quite determined to succeed in whatever it was he wanted. At this point, the Hogwarts student left the rest of the events trying to short-circuit his brain alone, and simply watched where Dudley was planning to take this proverbial new route to.

Harry then proceeded to observe in part indifference, part amusement and part bewilderment as his cousin tried hard and slowly got better at his attempts to—dare he say it?—protect the teen wizard.

The young wizard was unable to feel anything resembling happiness from this development, because the fact of the matter was that Dudley was _too many years too late_ with his decision of needing to achieve reconciliation with the cousin he’d relentlessly bullied throughout their ‘shared’ childhood.

That was not to say that Harry didn’t appreciate the gesture—he did.

It was just that the Harry that would have treasured it, welcomed it, would have _killed_ for that kind of regard from his blood family…

_Had already died a long time ago._

If the hurried way Dudley went about it was any indication, the blond teen was aiming at getting to where he wanted to be before the summer was over—which was when Harry would leave, never to return again—the deadline was the most likely explanation for the desperation that Harry saw in Dudley’s countenance and the restlessness that had seeped into the former bully’s conduct, both aspects steadily worsening as the weeks passed.

The idea of a Dudley that possibly wanted to keep seeing Harry—not to torment, bully or tease, but because he genuinely _wanted to_ —was a very puzzling one to the Gryffindor.

Henceforth, when it came to interacting with each other, the cousins observed their counterparts more than they spoke.

In between dealing with all the stuff that had been going on—his uncle and aunt’s ever-fickle moods, being stalked by inanimate magical objects that he always had to return to his trunk before resuming his work, Dudley’s rapid changes in behaviour and the previously never-ending chores that he was now able to complete in a much more timely manner—Harry spent all of his free time with Hedwig in his room to study the Snitch.

The wizard theorised that the reason why the stalking hadn’t started until that one morning was because he hadn’t left his room for any period of time longer than a short bathroom break since the beginning of the summer. The only exception to that was when Mr Weasley and Mr Shacklebolt came by, but Harry figured that the fact that no one had noticed anything didn’t mean that they hadn’t followed Harry then too.

Before that, he had had his trunk nearby for most of the time.

And before _that_ , he didn’t have all three of them yet.

Yes, Harry had already noticed that the Snitch contained the ring. It was hard to miss, what with the Snitch acting as if it belonged with the wand and cloak.

Whenever Harry focused on the golden ball he could feel the distinct spike of energy leaking through the engraved pattern of lines it sported. The fact that the ring was inside meant the ball could be opened, but another type of magic held everything shut, the signature of which Harry identified as the headmaster’s.

With his senses, Harry determined that the spell that was used prevented Harry from getting at the ring until some condition was met. He had yet to figure out how to get the ring out of the Snitch—whether by fulfilling the magical requirement of the magic holding it shut or forcing it open some way—and he had spent many an hour holding the Snitch up and staring at it in hopes of working out some solution.

Prodding the arrangement of magic further had led to the teen finding out that a tendril of Dumbledore’s magic was connected to the Snitch’s enchantments—he considered that bit his first lead in solving the puzzle.

He had already verified that it truly was _his_ Snitch from the first game of Quidditch he had ever played, the one he had won by nearly swallowing the ball. Hermione had helped him look up the spells to interact with the enchantments on the Snitch, enabling one to read the impression, the memory, of its first contact with human skin. This function served mainly to identify the person that caught it first in the game, meant to solve cases of disagreement over with seeker had earned the 150 points for their team.

The confirmation was oddly specific; the touch registered was that of Harry’s mouth, not so much his skin—and a careless brush of his lips over the Snitch during one of his moments of thinking confirmed it.

_“I open at the close”_

The minor spell that accompanied Dumbledore’s main spellwork—specifically, the bit of magic that Harry had sensed clinging to the underlying enchantments—had activated at the touch, etching the words onto the Snitch’s smooth surface for Harry to read.

For days he pondered on the meaning of the message, even as he absently plucked cloak, ball and wand from the most unlikely spots time and again, dodged his uncle when he was in one of his murderous rages, survived his aunt’s glares, did his chores, navigated conversations with the cousin who might as well be a stranger for all that they were blood-related, and prepared for his last year at Hogwarts.

Then, a few nights before his birthday, he had a thought that didn’t let him go until he was back in his room, done with chores for the day.

‘The close’, he wondered, wasn’t that a way of referring to the end of a book?

He knew that the headmaster’s spells were meant for him, that nobody else was allowed to get the ring from the Snitch…

Bring this together, and Harry had an inkling that he needed something that corresponded to ‘the close’, something solely applicable to himself.

And he thought about his life so far, of the last year full with self-discovery, and he thought about the dictionary definitions of ‘close’ that he had looked up in between chores that day.

There had been many of them, but three had stood out:

_“To come to an end, terminate.”_

_“The end or conclusion.”_

_“To bring to an end; cease.”_

An end. Harry needed an end of some sort to fulfil the condition of the spell.

His first idea was death, but that would be too permanent and the entirely wrong order of things, getting the ring only after he would have no more use for it.

What about an end of a different kind?

Harry took the time to mentally go over his life. One aspect stood out in particular; how everything that ever went wrong with his life was directly or indirectly brought about by the biggest bastard of the century that everybody was insisting should be brought down by Harry himself, never mind that the teen was several decades of experience, knowledge and _training_ the man’s junior.

Ending Voldemort’s reign of terror, would that qualify?

Harry thought it might, but there were two problems with that route.

One: it would take too long, would take time he sensed he didn’t have. The mad half-blood was a symptom of the corrupted, fucked-up system of magical Britain, not the root of its innumerable faults—and Harry _knew_ that there was a much bigger crisis hidden behind (or beneath) this one that the Gryffindor inevitably would need to face, the way he was already forced to with the current issue, and it would take _everything_ he had to make that problem _go away_ too.

Two: while it certainly qualified as an end, it wasn’t truly an end for Harry. Sure, the period in his life spent dodging ol’ Tom’s murder attempts and destructive schemes would certainly come to a close, but… It would be more of an end for Tom Marvolo Riddle than it could ever be for Harry James Potter.

He dropped that line of thought, but a stray piece of his previous thoughts caught his attention.

A period of his life… Could _that_ work?

Could the end of a phase of his life be enough?

It would need to be a powerful change between states, come as close to the absolute end—death—as possible in order to carry the necessary power to trigger the spell holding the blasted thing closed.

Harry’s river of thoughts started to flow faster and faster until it more resembled a raging flood wave, throwing his mind in a state of fluid chaos that left him feeling rather light-headed and momentarily filled his vision with illusionary streaks of light.

He thought he _might_ just have found something, several somethings possibly, that would do the trick.

And what was even better, the timing was _ideal_.

Harry was maturing quickly, and along with that came separating himself from the established order. As much as he liked the headmaster, Harry did not think the man capable of making the right decisions when it came down to a choice between the needs of few versus the needs of many. The ancient wizard’s track record was abysmal where certain individuals where concerned—Tom Riddle came to mind, as did Sirius, even Snape—and sadly, Harry was a frequent victim in these cases.

He didn’t think he could really _hate_ the professor, but Harry did resent the old man a little for choosing to protect the masses over his student for so many times.

At the same time, he had known for most of the year now that the three artefacts combined were a key of sorts, physical omens of the moment his inheritance would fully manifest. The instant that all three came together would kick-start the true awakening of what Harry for now thought of as his magical heritage, which would also—by the look of things—neatly coincide with his seventeenth birthday, when he would reach his official majority. All the signs he’s gotten so far indicated that the transition would at the very least be _intense_.

That last step in his awakening as something _more_ , it would start as soon as the Snitch opened, the moment the ring joined its fellows, and that put him in the unique situation where he had the option of choosing when to invoke the transition of one blended state to another.

His upcoming seventeenth birthday; the cusp of adulthood in the eyes of the wizarding world.

The maturing that had steadily been taking place since he was but a child, then accelerating all throughout last year and now only a tiny mental push away from completion.

Awakening to his magical inheritance, to be wrapped up as soon as he opened the Snitch he still held in his hand.

All three were changes that _somehow_ ended up coinciding as perfectly as if he had planned it all. The smile that lit Harry’s face was small but blinding and, satisfied with his plan, he put the Snitch down onto the desk before returning to bed—to sleep this time.

As midnight approached on the eve of his birthday, Harry sat down on his bed and took up the Snitch once more.

The shiny golden ball was held high above his head for a couple of moments, before Harry was able to steel himself enough to speak the words that would—should—trigger the spells to open the Snitch.

He brought the little ball right before his face so that he saw himself on the reflective surface, his breath slightly fogging up the image. He breathed the words of his statement onto the surface of the Snitch, almost kissing the thing while he spoke.

_"I am about to die."_

Harry the child—if only in body. Harry the teen—toyed with by others while he could not stop it. Harry the average wizard—as ordinary as any other teen, no matter what the papers might say.

The death of an era in miniature, of a child in name only, of a boy not enough protected, of a magical but otherwise unremarkable human.

That person would die in a few moments’ time.

Dumbledore’s magic dissolved.

Parts of the golden shell smoothly slit back to reveal a hole that encompassed nearly the full width of the Snitch, its diameter almost equal to that of the ball. Inside that hole, the first thing he saw was something sleek and black that gleamed in the dim light of the room.

Then he took a better look, and _gasped_.

A heavy silver ring inlaid with a dark stone—looking just like he remembered it.

Slowly, Harry reached out with his free hand, fingers outstretched, to take the ring from its hiding place. Its magic gave a happy swirl when his skin made contact with the stone and that brought a smile to Harry’s face even as he slit the ring onto his finger with one natural-feeling movement.

He didn’t even have to look to know that the cloak and the wand had appeared next to him on the bed and reached out blindly, but somehow unfailingly, to take up the cloak and drape it over his shoulders, to take the wand and hold it before him.

The three gave an excited spark of magic at the same time, as if coordinated for just this moment, before Harry was abruptly hit with a wave of knowledge many times greater in volume, detail and cohesion than he had ever had before.

Had Harry looked in that moment, the old beaten-up wristwatch on his desk would have read midnight on the dot.

Magical maturity set in, as did emotional maturity, brought along with the river of knowledge and memories that seemed would never stop, such force it carried and such depth it had.

As sudden as it had begun, it stopped.

And then harry _knew_.

Oh, and by Merlin, _how_ he knew!

Harry knew now unspeakably terrible things, as well as unfathomably wonderful things.

He knew his origin and what was to be his end.

He knew his name as well as his _name_.

He remembered. He knew. He foresaw.

His birthright, his title, lied on his lips—just waiting to be used.

“I am—” he began, wanting to try speaking the honorific he had claim to.

“I am Harry James—” he tried again, licking his lips to moisten the dry skin.

“I am Harry James Potter, Master of Death.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Draco, Severus, Albus and Dudley (sort of) snuck their way in when I wasn't looking.


	2. First step – Renewal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which the new set of Hallows sees the light of life._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the eagerly awaited second chapter of Marks of the Master.  
> I have no clue how I did it, but this monster ended up even longer than the previous one, yet took me one month less to produce. The overwhelmingly positive reactions I've gotten on the last chapter _may_ have contributed, I suspect.  
>  Chapters will probably be shorter from here on out though, so that's a plus... Or not. I guess it depends on your point of view.
> 
> There is a part with Draco near the beginning that I had difficulty fitting in and feedback on whether I succeeded or failed to do this properly is much appreciated. You also may want to keep an eye out for the subtle references I made to canon events and the parallels between this AU and canon.
> 
> Feel free to start reading this chapter now.

Harry wasn’t sure whether he _remembered_ , _knew_ or _foresaw_ the things that happened on the other side, because the chronological order of events was confusing at best and headache-inducing at worst. Time did not run the same for the two parts of his existence and, to make matters worse, he suspected that his perceptions of time did not run synchronous either.

On one hand Harry really wanted to sort this incomprehensible mess out once and for all, but on the other hand he thought it wouldn’t make any meaningful difference if he had the answer.

For clarity, he decided to go with ‘remembering’, treating any new insights as if they had happened mere moments before he received the knowledge, unless—and only unless—the memory itself contradicted that assumption.

An inelegant solution, but it would do, he supposed.

Harry turned around to take in the dark room he was in right now, eyeing the peeling wallpaper stained with substances he didn’t want to know and the mould-covered spots in the corners for a bit, before resuming his pacing. He hadn’t thought it possible, but in one single year the interior of Grimmauld Place seemed to have deteriorated to an even sorrier state than before the Order of the Phoenix had ever set foot in the old Black family home.

That was in a way quite impressive, Harry thought, and he was pretty sure that his observations held an understatement of epic proportions somewhere. Sure, he’d never _seen_ what the house looked like right before the Order made it HQ, but the graphic detail in which Sirius tended to explain _anything_ he had strong feelings about—Sirius being Sirius had hardly had any middle ground and had dealt only in extremes: positive and negative, so that had more or less translated to simply _everything_ —meant that Harry actually had a pretty good idea of just how much it had resembled a haunted house.

But it mattered little, in the end, because it still served its purpose—his two best friends were sleeping downstairs in the living room, worn out by the events of the day, and Harry himself had _things_ to see to.

The teen stopped next to a wall, closed his eyes, took a second or two to clear his mind, then soundlessly called a specific soul from the other side.

Were he still the same as he was before his seventeenth birthday, Harry wouldn’t have noticed the miniscule change in atmosphere, or that behind him a spot of dark-black shadows had appeared in one corner next to the fireplace.

Harry didn’t need his eyes to see; his senses told him everything he needed to know.

Footsteps sounded, or would have if they made sound, but Harry could sense them as clearly as if the one approaching was stomping with heavy boots on a creaky surface. To anyone else, the person crossing the room was unnaturally inaudible, to the point that even the rustling of clothing was absent.

Harry waited silently, patiently, until the footsteps stopped behind him, the visitor remaining a respectable distance away from the human. At that point Harry opened his eyes and took his time to study the painting that was hung on the wall in front of him.

It had been pretty once upon a time, showing a forest scene bathed in light, but this painting too hadn’t escaped the decay that had also ruined the rest of the house—its canvas was torn, dirty, damaged and utterly still like its muggle counterparts, missing more than half of its once-golden frame while the remnants were tarnished beyond repair.

A mere thought ignited the wood in the fireplace to light up part of the room in flickering orange light, casting shifting shadows that followed the contours of every piece of the furniture clustered together at that end of the room. It was not enough light to make all the darkness go away, and with everything that crowded around and near the fire—the chairs, rug, low table, cabinets—its reach was limited even further, but it was enough to see by, somewhat.

Harry turned around to face the one he’d called.

Abraxas Malfoy took the appearance of a young man with the trademark white-blond hair and grey eyes of his family line, seemingly older than his grandson Draco by a few years, but younger than his fully mature son, Lucius. The clothing he wore was the modern Slytherin version of the standard Hogwarts uniform that Harry was familiar with—complete with the green tie and the Slytherin emblem sewn to the front pocket—although Abraxas’ current form made him look too old to be a student.

Harry was not surprised by the way the man had chosen to manifest—it was a reflection of how a soul saw itself, and would not everyone prefer to see themselves as they had been in what they considered their prime?

The age and dress were the only aspects that made Abraxas look human, because the rest definitely _didn’t help_ reinforce that image at all. He had a wash of shadow over his form that made him look dark and looming, despite the pale skin, light-coloured eyes and even paler hair. The colours were not actually dark or dull, but they did appear washed-out somehow, as if he was something from a black-and-white picture that had been put in a colour photograph—a monochrome figure in a full-colour environment.

As one of the dead, Abraxas was fully free of all earthly attachments, but he still bore some unnamed weight on his shoulders that darkened his eyes and gave him the look of a world-weary youth. Harry knew what weight the soul bore; it was the price of Abraxas’ choice in the past, when he had stood to be Judged and had first answered ‘no’ and then said ‘yes’.

Until the deceased Malfoy had paid his price in full, it would remain the soul’s burden to carry and it was not Harry’s place to meddle with that—especially considering that _he_ was the other party in the exchange.

In addition to that load, the man also bore the strain of displacement, of being one of the dead dwelling in the living world—a realm he no longer belonged to. His markings as an Envoy eased that strain to a great extent, but a fraction of discomfort would always remain, in part to remind the soul of the fact that this was no longer his world.

Abraxas kneeled before Harry as a valet would before their king, performing a solemn genuflection meant for the mortal’s eyes only, a privilege that only Harry had. When the former Lord Malfoy deemed the drawn-out bow had lasted long enough, he raised his head and straightened his shoulders but kept his gaze on Harry’s feet in deference.

Even then Abraxas remained silent, waiting to be commanded, a grim spectre ready to serve.

“Your grandson is in need of protection,” Harry intoned with the echoing cold voice of the other world.Abraxas’ stance tightened just the slightest bit, but he held himself rigidly still.

“Find him,” Harry continued. “Protect him.

Abraxas still did not move, and Harry instinctively knew that it was because he hadn’t dismissed the soul yet.

“Your son and daughter-in-law are also under my protection. You are to keep an eye on their status as well and, should the need arise, lead them to safety.”

Harry momentarily brought his hands together in an unconscious gesture reminiscent of a ruler addressing their court while seated on a throne, a posture that meant they had only their hands free to move as they wanted.

“Lastly, your son’s friend, teacher to your grandson, is a master of masks and lies—and he too falls under my purview. You will see to his continued health, but he is not to know of your existence.”

The side of himself that was not human didn’t care about names or titles beyond the very basic ones and preferred to use other designations to address or refer to people, hence the use of the somewhat odd and indirect manner of speech.

In the silence that fell Harry made to face the ruined painting again, before remembering the presence of the kneeling figure. He made a sharp gesture with his hand.

“Be gone,” he ordered.

And in the next moment, Abraxas was.

When Ron and Hermione came looking for him in a state of panic in the morning, they found their friend in that same room, seated in near-darkness before the dying fire in the fireplace. Harry told them he had just needed some time to think, which was mostly true as he had spent the majority of the night watching the fire be reduced to smouldering embers while planning and thinking—once the part of the night dedicated to summoning Abraxas was over and done with.

As expected, both Ron and Hermione took it to mean that Harry had needed the time to digest the chaotic events of the day before, put away the memories of the fighting, the disorder, the running, the panic and the worry.

They knew him well, too well sometimes, but Harry knew them even better—he saw the things that plagued them as if it were written on their faces.

Hermione looked harried, the worry over her parents she’d sent away to Australia a nearly visible weight on her shoulders.

Ron was equally strained, and in his case the attack on his family at Bill and Fleur’s wedding ate at his mind most of all.

Harry thought they really needed a distraction, and set his mind to work to provide one.

Soon, Harry managed to divert their attention to exploring the house, mainly the rooms of Sirius and his younger brother Regulus. They made several interesting discoveries, most of them personal enough that they crossed right into emotional territory, at least where Harry was concerned.

The younger Black brother seemed to speak to Harry through his belongings, the metaphorical voice loud enough that the Trio decided to call Kreacher and ask about his late favourite master.

In the conversation that followed it became clear that Kreacher was utterly _terrified_ of Harry, shown in the way he cowered before the wizard, didn’t look him in the eye, didn’t dare to disagree with anything Harry said, tried but miserably failed to increase the physical distance between them and eventually settled on just staying as far away as permitted.

These details made Hermione give Harry suspicious looks, as if she was wondering what kind of depraved things Harry had done to the house-elf in just that one year since he had inherited him from Sirius to get the little thing so afraid of his new master.

Harry didn’t say anything, knowing that it was the way his magic reeked of death that terrified Kreacher, and the wizard didn’t think he could explain any of those circumstances without alienating either of his friends. One thing explained would lead to another and anything he left out would raise questions, prompt them to prod and poke until he gave in and told them everything, which then would eventually get to his true awakening only the night before last night, and then everything would be shot right to hell.

No, it was best to leave that revelation right where it was, for now—possibly forever.

Yet more hidden truths came to light when Kreacher came to tell the story of Regulus’ last orders and the circumstances of his near-certain death—eventually leading to the realisation that the locket Harry had handled during the clean-up of Grimmauld Place was actually one of Tom’s seven horcruxes.

As soon as they could, the Trio sent Kreacher on his way to collect Mundungus Fletcher, unanimously and nonverbally in agreement to not wanting to force the house-elf to endure more of Harry’s presence than strictly necessary.

Hermione had visibly been gearing up to interrogate Harry for the duration of the conversation, but she would never get around to actually unleash it. At first she was distracted by discussing the new insights talking with—or maybe it was more listening to—Kreacher had brought. Then it was planning, gathering information about the current state of Magical Britain, worrying over the long time it apparently took Kreacher to get Fletcher and the possibility that the house-elf had betrayed them again.

That last option was unlikely, however, seeing as he was not only terrified of Harry, but also fond of the new master that had gifted his house-elf the replicated locket that had belonged to his beloved former master Regulus—and between those two very different, yet extremely strong emotions, Kreacher shouldn’t have incentive to betray Harry either way.

Two days later Harry feared that Hermione would erupt like a volcano—he might’ve even spotted a wisp of steam coming from her ears, though it was most likely his imagination—but she was this time interrupted by an unexpected visitor at the door, which turned out to be Remus Lupin.

The ex-professor said he’d come to check up on them, independently, what with the usual ways of communication between Order members in shambles in the aftermath of Voldemort’s violent takeover of the ministry. Hogwarts was at that very moment being set up as a stronghold in the middle of the Scotland region, with other safe zones being created elsewhere for the rest of Britain.

Remus offered Harry the assistance and the protection he could give on the young man’s future travels, feeling conflicted all the while. Harry was the only proof left that his two best friends had lived, the one his chosen sister-in-law had died for, but his own unborn child was just as much physical proof of the mutual love between Remus and one Nymphadora Tonks—and Remus couldn’t be with both.

But Harry, clever little Prongslet that he was, saw right through his excuses—and ruthlessly crushed them all.

As hurt as Remus was by the sudden unveil of his insecurities, as bitterly awed of the man James’ son was becoming, the elder wizard was also very sad by the implications of the observations the werewolf had made over the few years he had truly known the teen.

The fact that Harry’s maturity did not match his age was very telling, a clear indication of having led a hard life, and Remus couldn’t help but be engulfed in a mixture of rage, guilt and depression whenever he allowed himself to think about it.

Only days earlier Remus had decided to make up for the years he had wasted with self-pity, mourning and hurt, but he now found himself sent right back to his wife and child before he could even start. Yet another sad truth to add to his list of reasons that fuelled his self-flagellation, but not nearly the one that stung the most.

Harry, Remus had already realised a long time ago, was an independent child and was on the verge of becoming an even more independent adult—life had taught the boy how to survive without help of any kind, be they adults or other people in general, and he would likely never be able to let himself be taken care of; that ship had sailed a long time ago.

No, Harry had no one when he needed somebody, and now that there were a couple of people, no matter how few their number—Remus among them—that would take care of Harry if only he asked, it was much too late.

The window of time in which Remus could have become Harry’s confidant had been so much smaller than expected—and he hadn’t even known, had to find out the hard way when they met again in Harry’s third year. Now Remus knew that he’d missed the opportunity completely, and there was no salvaging a bond that had never existed, there were no second chances for this sort of thing.

The best he could do, now, was earn Harry’s respect as a fellow adult, bond as friends or colleagues, a senior at most, grow close to the teen on an equal footing—because Harry would never accept _anyone_ trying to claim authority over him, hurt as he was by people whom had abused their power as authority figures too many times to count.

That realisation had broken Remus heart several times over since he’d come to that conclusion, but he would survive, as he always had.

Right now he would respect Harry’s wishes—which, _incidentally_ , also helped avoid the impressive temper that the teen had inherited from his mother—by returning to ‘Dora and supporting her.

After an epic row the likes of which they had never had before, Remus left with his (at the moment metaphorical) tail between his legs, clearly unable to stand up against Harry’s arguments and the emotional manipulation the teen wielded as deftly as if he had been sent to the Snake Pit instead of the Lions’ Den in his first year.

If Remus had even noticed the unexpected mastery of underhandedness, he was much too distraught to comment on it—Harry had very effectively guilted the man back to Tonks—but the two friends by Harry’s side had most definitely not missed that their supposedly quintessential Gryffindor best friend had somehow whipped out a distinctly Slytherin skill, and used it like a pro too.

They had known for a long time now that Harry wasn’t 100% a Gryffindor, but that didn’t help much when they were only now confronted with this much undeniable proof without warning and in such an intense manner.

They didn’t have time to dwell on it, though, because that was when Kreacher returned, dragging a very unwilling Fletcher along to be interrogated. The elf was so excited at the prospect of the thief that stole from the House Black getting punished for his crimes that Harry being in close proximity barely fazed the house-elf this time. The crazy little thing even brandished a saucepan at the sneak that had stolen everything valuable he could get his grubby hands on—whacking him upside the head a few times to loosen up his tongue.

What they got out of Fletcher was decidedly less pleasant; he’d handed Umbridge the locket when she’d caught him in Knockturn Alley—which meant that the Trio had a ministry under Voldemort’s control to infiltrate, unless they could somehow hand the job over to the Order without letting the knowledge of the horcruxes spread, which was highly unlikely.

The Daily Prophet that Lupin had brought along and subsequently left when Harry’d sent him fleeing back out the door was only noticed when they had sent Fletcher away again—and the most note-worthy article it carried was an announcement on the set-up of a commission that was ominously named the Muggle-Born Registration Commission. Harry didn’t really need the accompanying text that was filled with propaganda of the Pure-blood supremacy variety, or the discussion about what the underlying purpose of the entire thing was, to know that it couldn’t mean anything good. Neither did he need to be told that the rag of a newspaper was by now firmly under Voldemort’s control.

It made their task more urgent than ever, and they set right to work.

Around that same time, at Hogwarts, a single teenage wizard stood alone in a certain room on the seventh floor.

Draco sighed while he put the tomes he’d read back on the shelf and bowed down to pick up the top book of a pile near his feet, exchanging the book he had stopped reading halfway through for another that he hoped would give him the information he needed. The Room of Requirement—as this place was apparently called—had kindly given Draco a nice bed, two tables and a few chairs, all arranged to give the place a bit of a homey feel.

Draco had initially resigned himself to long boring days with nothing to do but sleep and eat the food that was brought by a house-elf, because the room was apparently unable to provide it, but he hadn’t had to worry—rows upon rows with books filled the rest of the room, offering him all the information he could want for in this situation.

Hidden away in this chamber for the summer, Draco had been doing research that had been long overdue—in search of a likeness of the very sigil he carried on his skin, over his heart. There were uncountable variations of such symbols, but no entity would ever use another’s, only ever their own, and that had made the job slightly easier.

Eventually, he had found it—a picture of the flame-like mark that darkened his own skin. With hope hammering in his chest Draco had hurried to read the accompanying text, holding his breath in expectation.

The book had identified the entity it belonged to as the Master of Death, a title Draco had recognised from the popular children’s tale he had enjoyed so often in his youth, a familiar figure that was apparently much more than the mere legend it was widely believed to be.

It had gone on to describe some of the known cases in history where someone had been found to carry the veve of the Master of Death, and how their lives had unfolded and eventually ended. Draco had been about to close the book, having gotten his most important questions answered, for the moment, when he had noticed another mark—no, its size had made _markings_ a more appropriate term—featured in the next part of the article.

It had been a lot bigger and far more elaborate, adding many more lines, curves and shapes to the basic design, but was otherwise the very same black fire/plume hybrid blooming on his own skin—and the knowledge had shocked Draco like nothing else had before in his life, since no Deity would deign to use a mark so similar to another’s that they could be easily confused, but _somehow_ there apparently _was one_ that _did not mind_ the enormous potential for mix-ups.

If Draco hadn’t known better, he would have said that the two marks were meant to substitute for one another.

The description that had been given for the second mark had painted age-old tales of people reappearing that had already died, who had all worn these large distinct markings across their backs—and that all these dead people had been confirmed as not being given their marks by the (suspected) Master of Death of that time, but nonetheless obeyed them without question.

The author of the book had gone on to speculate that the likeliness of the two sigils meant that the two forces that owned them were closely related, or even collaborated as a matter of course. Thus, even though it was not confirmed, only speculated, the second seal’s owner had been given as Death—since it was the only known Deity that could possibly fit, the only ancient force that could reasonably be expected to allow the Master of Death to use Their contractors as if they were Their Own.

The tangent of rambling that had followed had held nothing more of interest to Draco and subsequent books he had read over the following days had nothing new to offer.

Draco had his suspicions about the whole ‘Death shares with Master of Death’ affaire, though, mostly because he thought that _something_ just _didn’t add up right_. Potter was not merely a human with power—he had seemed much too powerful to be a mere human when Draco had seen him in the abandoned bathroom.

No, to Draco’s senses and instincts Potter was an otherworldly power locked in an unassuming human form and Draco’s fearful awe had not been lessened in the least by the one meeting he’d had with the Gryffindor right before being set up in the Room of Requirement.

The likeliness of the two insignias only gave more credence to Draco’s theory that Potter was _more_ than just a human whom happened to have collected a few special relics.

Suddenly, Draco had a thought, a thought so terrifying that it seemed to freeze the world in place.

Could it be that there _was no separation_ between the two forces in the first place?

That would explain… a lot.

If that were true, the situation was _so much more_ complicated than Draco had thought—and the possibility alone caused an icy shiver to go through him, up his spine, leaving cold clinging to his heart.

Even years later Draco would not be able to pinpoint what made him look up from his book, rip his attention away from the potentially world-shattering theory he had just formed, and search the room for something that had changed—precisely at that moment.

There was a stranger standing in the shadows of nearby shelves, far away from where the only door of the Room of Requirement that led outside would appear. The stranger was a man with the same shade of white-blond hair and grey eyes that Draco saw in the mirror every day, wearing the very same type of black robe that Draco had worn for six school years now, and going by his age Draco estimated him to already be out of Hogwarts, if only by a few years.

For a lack of a better word, the man was… unsettling.

He looked like a Malfoy in everything, from his physical genetics to his stance—but Draco knew that man _couldn’t_ be family, despite the uncanny resemblance to both himself and his father.

There were only three Malfoys left, and this stranger was not one of them. Draco had no older brother—he couldn’t be the heir to the Malfoy name if he wasn’t the oldest son to the current lord—and both his father and grandfather were only children, thus the man being a cousin was also out.

The stranger showed the Malfoy class that the family had down to a fine art, which ruled out the possibility of him being an unknown bastard child, and any legitimate family on Draco’s mother’s side would have similar class, but be of Black blood instead of from the Malfoy line.

Just _who_ was he?

“Draco,” the man said softly, and as if his appearance hadn’t unsettled Draco enough, even the voice sounded wrong. Despite the perfect, if somewhat bland, intonation, despite sounding exactly like the young man barely out of school he appeared to be—it somehow didn’t fit.

It felt like the stranger’s voice was too high, too childish, for his body—that this person wore a form not his own and his voice had changed to match if for no other reason than to avoid confusion.

What was worse, Draco decided—once he was over the shock of hearing his name fall from this individual’s lips—was that there was at once an onslaught of emotion and no emotion at all in that single word, the two opposing states somehow coexisting in an disturbing mixture of impossible.

Like there was some force at work set to stripping any and all emotion from his voice and yet not quite succeeding at this task.

It was when the man set a foot forward that Draco was startled away from his internal panicking and was left to numbly watch as the figure completely emerged from the shadows that were cast by the shelves.

Draco was too shocked by the situation to consider whether to attack or to flee when the maybe-Malfoy steadily approached.

The moment he could, the man reached out to cradle Draco’s head in his hands with great care, swiping his thumbs over the teen’s jawline. The stranger’s face was set with affection and sadness.

“I am sorry that I was forced to leave your life so early. Had I been given the choice, I would still be here now.”

The man gave Draco a bitter smile.

“For the time being, I am here for you—as I should have been all along.”

_Something_ in the words, in the tone—combined with all the things about sigils, Death and the Master of Death he had read in the last few days—caused the knut to drop for Draco.

“Grand… father?”

Before Draco’s eyes, the now-smiling figure changed drastically. At first Draco panicked, still on edge from the possibility that he could be right and equally tense from the just-as-possible option of being wrong.

It took a few seconds into the transformation until Draco could actually comprehend what was happening: the man was aging, gaining years with every second that passed—and the longer it took, the more heart-wrenchingly familiar he became to Draco’s eyes.

Soon, who was stood before Draco was his very own paternal grandfather, exactly as he’d been—if much more healthy than—when he had passed away from Dragon Pox years ago. Draco had still been little then, but he remembered his grandfather well enough to tell that _this was him_ , this was the very same man whom his parents had always addressed with the title of ‘father’, who had doted on Draco as a young boy.

And for several long minutes, Draco Malfoy did nothing but cling to the dress robes Abraxas Malfoy now wore, and cry a river of bitter-sweet _heavy_ tears.

At Grimmauld Place, the monotony of gathering intel on the ministry was only briefly interrupted by a particularly bad collection of news pieces in the Daily Prophet that slandered the name of Albus Dumbledore and everyone known to be on his side, Harry himself included.

Included was also an article on Hogwarts, one that said the ministry actively discouraged sending children there because of ‘the multitude of unsavoury people present at the school’. The Trio took that to mean that the Order had likely relocated there.

An edition of the Daily Prophet of several days later held a list of muggle-borns that hadn’t shown up for interrogation—Hermione’s name among them.

Harry didn’t summon any other souls to help with the information gathering and neither did he speak to Abraxas again.

He _could’ve_ hidden it easily, what with how driven, distracted and consumed Ron, Hermione—and, Harry supposed, himself—were by the task. He _could’ve_ done it without repercussions, without needing to fear either being scolded or punished for breaking rules of the natural order.

It was just that this job was not part of _his_ domain, had nothing to do with the dead, and to put souls on spying duty would cheapen the end results. And thus, he didn’t.

When the first of September came around a contingent of Death Eaters appeared outside, and set to guard the perimeter of the house they could reach, likely meaning to catch the Trio if they were there and attempted to leave through the front door.

Idiots.

The seventh-year students left by apparition, disapparating from the specifically designated apparition room of Grimmauld Place, to land right before the gates of Hogwarts, where they were welcomed inside without much fuss.

Once past the threshold of Hogwarts itself, it became clear that the castle had become a hive of activity since they had left at the end of the school year. Students of all years, both newly graduated and those about to graduate, professors, Order members, civilians and complete families that looked like they were about to keel over from stress where _everywhere_.

Pending the availability of somebody able to inform them of the situation, Harry, Ron and Hermione went to organise an immediate DA meeting with all members they could get a hold of—which turned out to be nearly all of them, including the majority of the graduates. They debated intensely for what felt like hours, but was in reality only two at most, about the takeover of the ministry, Voldemort, the defence of Hogwarts and what they could, should or would do about it all.

With the Golden Trio being very well known and easily recognisable high-profile targets, Luna, Ginny and Neville had apparently been planning for the eventuality of absence of any or all of the DA’s leaders over the summer holidays—plans that they now presented to Ron, Harry and Hermione.

Hermione was especially delighted with the forethought, and Ron was impressed by the good use of strategies for each and every possibility the sixth years (and one seventh year) had thought of, while Harry felt more secure in the knowledge that his group of defence students would be capable of fending for themselves in the eventuality that he wasn’t around to lead them.

What the three of them _didn’t_ say was that they were likely to be heading out regularly throughout the coming school year (and possibly future years too) for the sake of tasks that the rest of the DA couldn’t accompany them on. Also, hunting the horcruxes was very likely to end up solely on Harry’s—and therefore the Trio’s—shoulders, not that the three seventh-year Gryffindors so much as hinted at any of that.

Luna, Ginny and Neville were instantly named substitute leaders, and schedules were rapidly put together to teach the two younger students and the Trio’s classmate everything they would need to know about running the DA and how to verify when they had to take over or hand the reins back.

Once that was done, the meeting was considered to be over and the students scattered about the school again, though there was a fair number that stayed behind in the large unused classroom they had commandeered for the occasion.

Harry led the way back to the entrance hall, but before they reached their destination the three Gryffindors ran into somebody they hadn’t expected to meet at Hogwarts—Harry included himself in that group because while he knew that this person was at Hogwarts, he hadn’t expected their paths to cross like this.

The sight of Draco Malfoy had the effect on Ron akin to waving a red flag in front of a bull—or shoving a Malfoy in the face of a Weasley, as was the case here.

The redhead stormed forwards and attacked the other pure-blood with remarkable ferocity, grabbing onto the front of the other’s school uniform, then violently shaking the Malfoy heir back and forth like a ragdoll.

“You! What are you doing here, arsehole?” Ron raged, now apparently doing his damned best to choke the Slytherin with the double-handed hold the redhead had on the other’s collar. “You poisoned me! You cursed Katie!”

It was a minor fortune that Ron was too incensed to think of drawing the wand he still wore in his arm holster and that Malfoy seemed to have no intention of retaliating by using his.

“Yes,” Malfoy answered with an impressively steady voice in the face of all that fury, while somehow managing to pull off the impression of a drowned, kicked puppy without losing any of his aristocratic air.

In the end, it took Ron _four hours_ of shouting and swearing to get all the pent-up hate off his chest and he did not at all let up on the hold he had on the Slytherin for the entire tirade.

Hermione had sniffed somewhat imperiously at first when they had spotted the Slytherin, but had offered no comment on the young Malfoy’s presence, apparently preferring not to add more to the scene that Ron had already created—whether it was because she had already missed her opening to do so before Ron had broken loose or couldn’t muster the energy for it after having to wait for hours _or_ had other things on her mind with far higher priorities… Well, that all remained up for debate, in Harry’s opinion.

Harry himself had silently stayed on the sidelines, not willing to draw attention to himself, and had then quietly drawn Ron away as soon as the hostilities had wound down, leaving his childhood rival to stand alone in the hall—said Slytherin still wore the odd look of befuddlement on his face that was produced some time after the first hour of his session up close and personal with Ron, as if he couldn’t quite comprehend that all the hostilities had ended without actual violence.

Just before Malfoy was out of view, Harry managed to unobtrusively mouth ‘ _until next time_ ’ to the Slytherin over his shoulder, which he disguised as giving his rival an expected glare.

Hermione _may_ have been the only one to have noticed that titbit, but if she did, she didn’t say anything.

A lot of food from the buffet served at the Great Hall—now furnished with many small round tables instead of the usual House tables—brought Ron right back to normal, though it had the side-effect of starting a new tirade of sorts.

“I can’t believe that I lost it like that,” Ron said in-between bites. “Dunno what about the git made me go off, but can’t say I’m sorry about it. Not entirely.”

Harry gave his best male friend a half-smile in reassurance—Ron seemed to need it at the moment.

“You _do_ _know_ that Malfoy’s likely to be in trouble with his family over his desertion?” Hermione asked Ron with a vaguely questioning look.

“Ah yeah, I know. Doesn’t change the fact that he’s a git, or that he’s caused a lot of pain.” Ron paused there, thinking over his next words before he continued. “Look, I know that he was the one that gave us the info about You-Know-Who’s plans, but the point is that it isn’t because he wants to make amends or something. No, he’s scared to die, doesn’t want to be used as a pawn and then tossed aside. And that _would_ have happened eventually if he hadn’t changed sides.”

A goblet full of pumpkin juice was emptied next into Ron’s metaphorical black hole of a stomach.

“My point is, he sure as hell isn’t sorry about anything he’s pulled over the years and that makes me angry. Malfoy is only gonna put up with us because we’re the least likely to kill him; we’re just the better chance to live through the war.”

Where all the other food had gone, a plate of pastries now followed.

“Don’t get me wrong, tho. I despise him and I don’t like slimy snakes in general, but I can’t say that I blame him completely,” Ron mused softly, then whispered gravely: “I wouldn’t wanna die either.”

In a more normal tone Ron continued: “I can get where he’s coming from, sorta. He’s a snake, not a lion, and the ponce is going about survival the Slytherin way—self-preservation and everything, yeah. Solving his problems as a Slytherin would—the path that is both logical and natural for him.”

Done with eating at this point, Ron’s flow of words seemed to be slowing down too. He was now less ranting and more grousing.

“Git’s just trying to save his own skin and his secondary priority is probably saving his mum and dad, but I can’t imagine him having any plans to help us. I don’t expect him to, really, but it would’ve been nice…”

The redhead drew in a single deep breath, then exhaled, long, slow and _controlled_.

“Lemme just say: I can tolerate him as long as he isn’t being a bloody arse—well, _deliberately_. But that doesn’t mean that I have to like him,” Ron finished, almost childishly petulant.

Hermione gave him a very bright smile that spoke of the fondness and pride of a long-term friend.

The Trio was quiet then, letting the sounds of people coming, leaving, walking to and from the food tables and eating at the round tables—deliberately devoid of House colours—wash over them. The murmurs in the background were somewhat soothing, reminding them that these people were safe for now, still _alive_ , still had a chance to emerge from the conflict whenever it would end.

Ron, Harry privately mused, had done a lot of growing up while he hadn’t been looking—the thought of this mature Ron that the redhead was becoming, evidence of which had been shining through the words of his friend’s monologue, filled Harry with pride and happiness.

The feelings were strong enough that even his other part sat up and took notice of the situation, which in turn caused Harry himself to be filled with the familiar mix of otherworldly superiority and smug satisfaction.

The him here and the him there influenced each other heavily, some times more so than other times, and if there was something in either world that drew both their attention strongly enough, the normally linear connection would devolve into a feedback loop that kept amplifying their feelings ad infinitum—until they somehow ‘manually’ sorted out their connection to bring it back to its normal state.

Harry couldn’t quite grasp how his connection to his other half worked. It was completely unlike his tie to Voldemort—the only thing both links had in common was that they allowed to carry information between the parties it connected.

Harry’s understanding of this bond was full of holes and bizarre bits that did not make sense at all, plus all sorts of the strangest things that conflicted _spectacularly_ with each other, which made it extremely hard for Harry to pinpoint precisely what it was and how it worked. He couldn’t even imagine trying to explain it to someone else—in such a way that he was _understood_ , mind you—because it was entirely possible that the right words, the right definitions, simply _did not exist_.

It was a link, a bond, a connection, yet not. It essentially connected Harry to _himself_ , but they were also separate entities/people/beings/whatever the right word was. The other part of him was essentially also _Harry James Potter_ , while at the same time it _wasn’t named_ Harry James Potter.

They (he) were (was) the same… _something_ , yet both parts/aspects/personalities/halves/alter egos were perfectly capable of functioning separately—of should he say that t **he** y could do two things at the same time? Th **e** y handled their respective areas independently and shared every bit of information (knowledge, memories, feelings, perspective) as t **he** y did it—the timing of when t **he** y actually _received_ the information was as unclear as Trelawney’s crystal ball, but t **he** y assumed that the sharing would be immediate if it wasn’t for the odd quirks of time displacement between the two worlds.

They weren’t friends, or acquaintances—could not be, because how could one befriend oneself?

T **he** y might function as if they were two people, but thought as one, and the two of them would never meet, not even when Harry’s life would come to its inevitable end. T **he** y as a whole, on the other hand, could never die, were (was) usually a singular entity with the exception of relative short periods of time.

It was entirely likely that Harry would never be able to take anyone into his confidence—and his inability to explain this connection of t **h** e **i** r **s** was only one of many reasons.

All too soon Harry and his counterpart had to intervene into their bond to quell the waves of ever-strengthening emotions that were now on the verge of becoming overwhelming, and because Harry was doing this mostly on instinct it meant he was just mentally poking at the connection until it calmed—while feeling that he was flying completely blind (like every other time so far) yet somehow managing to get it done.

Their meal was finished without another word being spoken and the empty plates, just-as-empty goblets, cutlery and bowls (including the few leftovers there were) disappeared from the table as soon as the Trio stood up—leaving the table once more immaculate and ready for the next group that would sit there to eat.

In unspoken agreement Hermione, Ron and Harry went their separate ways for now. Hermione was undoubtedly headed for the library, Ron went to find whomever of his family had come to Hogwarts and Harry was in dire need of some alone time—which he eventually got in a very remote high-up hard-to-see alcove that had a good view of the main staircase below.

Hedwig had showed up about ten minutes after Harry had settled himself in the alcove and had landed onto a protruding stone of the wall Harry had pressed himself up to, carefully chosen for its close proximity to her human and its perfect height for comfortable petting without forcing Harry to overreach.

_My clever girl_ , Harry had thought adoringly before starting the requested petting that he would not stop until it was time to get back to his friends. In response, Hedwig had begun warbling notes in as close of an imitation of humming a melody as she could, continuing the song for the entirety of their stay in that alcove.

So they had sat hidden from the rest of the castle, silently looking out over all the people going up and down the moving staircases.

The rest of the day held nothing noteworthy, except when—for the first time that day—the three Gryffindors returned to the common room in preparation for bed. Gryffindor Tower had been expanded to give about a fourth of the refugees a place to sleep, and it showed with the many doors that now littered two of the walls of the significantly enlarged common room. Each of the new doors led to a narrow hallway with yet more doors that held bedrooms and bathrooms.

The comfortable Tower suddenly felt rather cramped with so many people around. If there was a system to how people were assigned their rooms or even in which House their lodgings were, none of the Trio could see it. The only thing that they could reasonably be sure of was that family was placed together, but that was it.

The actual student dormitories were unchanged and so was their assignment, which was the only positive thing about the Tower’s current situation in Harry’s opinion. He pointedly _did not want_ to think about the problems of having to share the dormitory with that many strangers would cause—even if it would only be a relative small portion of the total—he might just scream bloody murder.

Compared to last year, Harry had many more secrets to hide and he did not need yet more people witnessing his visions and nightmares at night, or ogling his belongings at day. He definitely did not need people staring and gawking even at one of his last safe havens at school.

His relief, Ron’s reassuring snores and Hedwig standing vigilant over him from on top of the footboard eventually lulled Harry to sleep.

The next day, starting from early in the morning, was filled with conversations with many people—with the Order, with students, with refugees—varying from acquaintances to total strangers, all wanting to know about the Trio’s plans or them to know about _their_ plans. The Golden Trio bravely weathered the stream of people and did nothing else for the entire day—with the single exception that was caused by a brief vision Harry had of Voldemort searching for someone named Gregorovitch in a manner that left a trail of bodies behind him.

Luckily, it happened in between talks so that they could discuss the possible reasons that Voldemort would want another wandmaker when he already had Ollivander kidnapped—Neville had told them of this earlier that same day, as well as his theory about possibly being the man’s very last customer.

Hermione wasn’t happy about Harry’s continued receiving of visions since it—in her mind—indicated that Harry wasn’t putting in enough effort to occlude, possibly not at all. Harry wished he could tell her that he no longer had anything to fear from the connection since his awakening, but he couldn’t settle on how to tell her without touching upon _the rest_ of it.

It was Ron that put an end to the discussion, telling both of his friends that they had to pull themselves together and that they didn’t ‘have time for this right now’, so the subject was dropped for the moment, and the three of them went back to the flood of people.

Then, at last, they were able to converse with Professor Dumbledore near the end of the day.

“Ah, but you see, dear children, I cannot leave Hogwarts,” Headmaster Dumbledore said. “Or perhaps it is better to say that I cannot afford to vacant the grounds at this point in time. Tom will undoubtedly have the school under watch, waiting for an opening to wipe out the competition, as it were. To get rid of anyone that could possibly jostle him out of his position of power.”

The old wizard held up his cursed hand for a moment. “Aside from that, I am presently undergoing treatment for this bit of cursework, carried out by our skilled Professor Snape and our capable Madame Pomfrey—who have decided to join forces for this particular project.”

Dumbledore made an expression that would have been described as ‘pouting’ if it had been just about anyone else in his stead.

“They have, in their infinite wisdom and shared expert knowledge, determined that I am not to venture outside for the time being—all for the sake of my own health and continued living, of course. The wards of Hogwarts are currently supporting my weakened constitution—similar to what the muggles would refer to as life-support, I believe—and provide the pair of them with more time to work on the curse.

Thus, I am afraid to say that I must leave the actual searching for the horcruxes to the three of you, as I am to remain here for the time being.”

There was not much that could be said to that.

“Excellent. Now, I am afraid that we must cut this conversation short for the moment, so why don’t you three return to your plans? I have given you all the current information on the horcruxes that I have available at this point in time so I’m afraid that I cannot do more for you youngsters.”

The headmaster gave them a blinding smile coupled with the famous eye-twinkle and deposited a handful of his trademark lemon drops into each of his students’ hands before he waved them to the door of his office.

Just before they actually reached the exit, Professor Snape entered, carrying a goblet from which smoke rose continuously—a sight very much reminiscent of when he would regularly deliver Wolfsbane potion to Professor Lupin in third year. It was likely a different potion, though.

Harry had sensed the gloomy man coming a long time before now, so he was the only one (besides probably the headmaster) that had expected Snape to show up. He pulled Ron along quickly, letting ‘Mione follow on her own initiative, dragging his friend down the moving staircase and away from the office.

In an out-of-the-way hallway that they had first thoroughly warded, Ron, Harry and Hermione converged to have a discussion of everything they’d heard and seen throughout the day.

They had been lucky enough to get the missing information about the ministry’s workings, layouts and schedules from Order members and non-members alike, enabling the three Gryffindors to finalise their plans earlier than expected—which made them set the date of execution much, _much_ sooner than before.

That night, however, Harry dreamed of the confrontation between Voldemort and Gregorovitch that had been in the works. Harry demanded _something_ from an upside-down-held Gregorovitch in a high and cold voice that felt completely different from Harry’s actual other voice. The man repeatedly said ‘I have it no more’ and that ‘it was, many years ago, stolen from me’—and then Harry saw a memory of the man running to a workshop where a golden-haired young man sat perched on the window ledge, who stunned the owner of the memory before escaping to outside, laughter echoing behind the figure. One more demand in the cold voice, one more reply begging for mercy, and then green light filled Harry’s view.

With screaming in his ears and green colouring his vision, Harry woke up while his heart raced and his scar throbbed. Ron was standing by his bed, pale and worried, his hands resting solidly on Harry’s upper arms.

Not a second later, Hermione came running inside, having been called by one of the other three boys—Harry couldn’t tell which—as was standard procedure in case of Harry having a vision of Voldemort.

And that it had been another vision was a certainty that Harry would not bother denying.

Dean and Seamus left the dorm room to give them some space, while Neville stayed inside. It was a rule the then-sixth years of the dorm had established that anyone was free to stay if they wanted to know what cruelties Harry had witnessed that night. If they didn’t want to know they would step outside for long enough to let the story be told while they couldn’t hear it.

Neville had so far never stepped outside, while Dean sometimes stayed and Seamus usually left.

But, whatever the extent of their knowledge, all of them knew enough to know not to let it spread.

And so Harry recounted his latest vision to Neville, Hermione and Ron, while also trying not to succumb to the lingering headache that was left in its wake. Hermione wore another disapproving frown, but seemed to have realised that Harry had decided on keeping his visions for now and that no amount of nagging or scolding would change his mind.

Halfway through the discussion that followed his description Harry recalled receiving Gregorovitch and sending the man on his way through one of the many doors leading beyond. He spared a brief thought about how the time discrepancy randomness had unexpectedly gone in his favour this time.

The aged wandmaker had worn the appearance of a young child and obediently let himself be sent on, subdued from the violent circumstances of his death. With his presence in the realm, Harry’s other self was now aware of every last bit of the soul’s life, up to and including even the tiniest detail.

That golden-haired man had not died yet, or at least hadn’t yet appeared before _him_ to be Judged, though he nevertheless seemed familiar to Harry. However, the man’s name being Gellert Grindelwald opened up yet another can of worms Harry wasn’t yet ready to touch at this time.

As for the thing that had been stolen, well, it was the very wand that Harry had safely hidden away in another holster. He couldn’t help musing that it was so like Voldemort to only focus on the wand, on pure power, and disregard both stealth and knowledge in the process.

The exact form of the story that went around in this day and age was not known to Harry, but he knew all (most?) versions that had come earlier—something that should be rectified at some point, but was a thing for later. However, Harry shouldn’t know any of that, so he acted as if he didn’t know anything beyond the bit about the wand the headmaster had told him last year and didn’t realise its importance.

Neville Longbottom knew more than anybody else of Harry’s friends that were not Ron or Hermione, but less than all the other people in on the knowledge. That was not enough to stop him from drawing his own conclusions or filling in the gaps on his own somehow.

The Golden Trio had a task to do this year, one of vital importance from what Neville could tell. It was likely more of Harry’s job than anything else, shoved off onto his shoulders because ‘he is the Chosen One’ or some other similar reasoning, and then picked up by Ron and Hermione—as much as Harry would let them, anyway—because they were good friends like that.

Neville had often wished he could do more, offer more help than a listening ear or being an attentive friend, no matter how scary the things that he would have to face would be if he did join Harry’s fights. He just wasn’t as clever like Hermione (‘the brightest witch of her age’) or as ready for adventure anytime like Ron (‘fifty points for the best played game of chess’)—not to mention that Neville couldn’t hold a candle to Harry himself; the bravest, kindest, humblest, most heroic person he knew or would ever know.

No matter how often Harry had told Neville that the latter would surely be ‘a great wizard someday’ and that what Harry did ‘wasn’t all that special’ Neville couldn’t really believe the words. It was nice of his friend to say that, but that didn’t make it true.

Still, since the Battle of the Department of Mysteries Neville had participated in two years back, his self-confidence had been steadily increasing. Neville had joined Harry for the ride on the thestrals to the ministry, had fought in its bowels, had come out alive and victorious, if injured—and all entirely on his own merit.

Now, with all the knowledge and experience he had accumulated, Neville thought that he was beginning to understand what Harry had been trying to say over the years.

For all his many virtues, being good with words was not one of Harry’s talents, but it was only half of the reason why it had taken so long.

Neville hadn’t been able to see it, not then, weighed down under the strain of his many insecurities as he was, but now he had matured enough to leave that self-destructive mind-set behind. He was no longer fettered in his growth, and now he could _see_ what Harry had always meant to convey.

Neville had the potential to be great, had a promise of obtaining strength in exchange for putting in enough effort, while Harry had grown up so much faster than anybody else because his life’s circumstances had forced it long before he would be ready, had required Harry to be ready years before his natural time.

Everybody had their different talents and wildly varying potential for strength, and Harry—with his insight born from this early maturity—had long since seen the kind of strength Neville already possessed, that he had only needed to nurture for it to bloom.

Armed with this realisation, Neville felt he was now ready to do his part in fighting for the Light in this war, determined to do the most good he could.

And so, over the summer Neville had come up with ways to ensure Harry’s freedom to move independently from the DA and the Order, away from Hogwarts if necessary, without losing the option of backup—ideas for which he had recruited Ginny and Luna’s help to realise.

Their plans had gone beautifully, which had bolstered Neville’s confidence further and had fanned his metaphoric fire of determination from an unsure flickering flame in the red-hot range right into a resolute steady _blaze_ in the white-hot stage.

Neville’s last tiny doubts over the path he had chosen had been all but obliterated when Harry had quietly praised his ideas at the DA meeting and had later in private said in no uncertain terms that Neville was doing good, that he was shaping up into the amazing wizard that the Potter (and Black) heir had always known to be lying dormant inside the Longbottom heir.

And this time, Neville believed every word.

Seeing as the discussion on Gregorovitch, the thief, Voldemort—and whatever the object was that all of them either used to have, stole or wanted—stalled quickly, the four students decided to just go back to bed for a few more hours of sleep. Harry had taken care not to give anything of his knowledge on the wand away—not yet sure of how to talk about his ownership of it without messing up.

They settled on the theory of Voldemort wanting to know more about how Harry’s wand kept reacting with his even when another wand was used. It was by no means certain, and both Ron and Hermione knew it, but as long as Harry didn’t figure out how to give the information he had, there wouldn’t likely be another way to come to the right conclusion.

The next morning the three Gryffindors set out early after having eaten a hearty breakfast, leaving the leadership of the DA in the safe hands of their substitute leaders.

Hermione hadn’t liked it at all, but they had been forced to conclude that the Order members were completely useless, with how busy they were right now and the need for secrecy on the subject of the horcruxes—so she, Harry and Ron would infiltrate the ministry alone and without immediate backup.

They completed their mission of infiltration on enemy territory without much grace, although they did manage to steal the locket horcrux in the end. With how many people the ministry was short now, even with the added Death Eaters to the ranks, things had been extra busy and everybody at the ministry was overworked, which meant that three well-prepared determined seventeen-olds pretending to be random people working there wasn’t noticed at all.

They finally caught Umbridge when she was on her way to her designated courtroom on level ten for ‘questioning’ of some kind in her capacity as Head of the Muggle-born Registration Commission, Harry managing to stun her and snatch the locket from her neck just as she stepped out of the lift.

Immediately afterwards, Harry told the huddled muggle-borns and half-bloods waiting on benches outside the courtrooms to run, hide, save themselves, be _anywhere else_ than at the ministry, even as both Ron and Hermione cast patronus charms to chase the dementors guarding them off.

Harry refrained from calling upon his own patronus because he knew that the horcrux he was holding would likely negatively impact him if he tried. Besides, the otter and terrier were enough for the number of dementors present. He couldn’t shake the thought that without the extra in-depth intelligence they had obtained and the reassuring, unconscious knowledge that there was Hogwarts—a safe haven—to return to afterwards, everything likely would’ve gone a lot messier and would’ve been so much riskier.

Harry continued carrying the locket all the way back to Hogwarts, inwardly shuddering at the foul energy the _thing_ emitted and refusing to let it so much as come near either of his friends. Unfortunately, Ron got caught by one of the tendrils of power just enough to make him fight with Hermione and stomp off once they were back at the castle. While ‘Mione ran after Ron as soon as she realised he had taken off, Harry took the opportunity of being left alone to conjure a special cloth and wrap it around the soul container, rendering the dark energy at least somewhat contained.

The Boy-Who-Lived visited with Alastor ‘Mad-eye’ Moody in the infirmary for a bit to drop off the retired auror’s magical eye that the student had liberated from Umbridge’s office door. The bedridden man was understandably wary of Harry when the eye was held out to him, but eventually accepted the object he was handed.

As soon as his back was turned, Harry heard Moody mutter detection spell after detection spell to find out in what way—in the paranoid man’s mind _if at all_ was never really considered to be an option—the eye had been tampered with. The Gryffindor had to hold back a snort of laugher despite the seriousness of the situation.

In the days afterwards, the black magic clinging onto Ron tightened its hold, making the moody teen even more volatile than usual, despite Harry’s best efforts to pry it loose. This clearly indicated that its source, the locket, had to be destroyed—or unmade—first, because it would hold on for as long as its origin existed.

There was a way to separate the soul and the container, but Harry didn’t think humans knew the ritual for it any longer. It was possible that the centaurs still remembered, but there was little chance that humans would think to ask and neither was there much chance that the centaurs would (pretend to) give up the knowledge, willingly or otherwise.

That left him only two options: employ the usual method of destroying the horcrux or find a way to perform the ritual secretly. The latter method would be significantly more difficult to pull off, as Harry would have to make up believable enough reasons to do the ‘destroying’ of the horcruxes alone and unobserved, if necessary arrange for fool-proof ‘destroyed’ substitutes and hide the liberated containers where they wouldn’t be found for the time being.

While the option of doing the ritual was much more difficult and probably not the best route to take if he wanted to keep himself free of more secrets that could be discovered by others, Harry had a bit of a preference for doing it anyway.

This had nothing to do with either of his roles—the _Saviour_ and the _Guardian_ —no, this was purely a desire of his human self, to set right what had irked him ever since that final private lesson with Dumbledore last year.

He did not want to let Voldemort get away with not only _tainting_ the rare artefacts he had undoubtedly used as soul vessels—among which were likely to be a lot of the Founders’ items—but also causing the items to be irrevocably _lost_ in the process of vanquishing him, since the point of destroying an horcrux was making the object uninhabitable for the soul piece, meaning that the vessel would have to be ruined beyond repair.

Harry didn’t know yet what direction he would choose and while he wavered over what to pick, the pressure on their group was rising towards its breaking point.

A somewhat impromptu visit to what had once been Wool's Orphanage in London yielded zero results, not that Harry had expected any, and returning to Hogwarts this time meant dodging the swarm of dementors that had descended on Hogsmeade like some exceptionally black cloud of depression taken physical form on the ground.

Sneaking past them required the Trio to lay off on summoning their patronuses, which Harry had no choice but to be unwillingly grateful for—this way, Ron and ‘Mione wouldn’t be forced to take note of the locket horcrux’ destructively demoralising influences on the psyche of anyone who so much as dared to come within range of its magic.

Merlin forbid if either of them were to experience the malevolent effects of actually handling it—which was the exact reason that Harry made sure that he was the only one to ever touch or carry the locket.

It couldn’t _hurt_ him, precisely; the influence of the other world that was always present prevented anything harmful the black magic could (try to) do to him, but this did not mean that it was completely without its effects.

Harry felt constantly nauseous, though it was more like an echo of the actual state than anything else—best described as feeling it mentally without having any of the accompanying physical reactions—and he was also in an endless state of unnatural exhaustion. He felt so _tired_ , was always carrying a weariness that went soul-deep—and it too was, again, some disturbing sort of mimicry of its real counterpart.

Neither could be cured with regular methods like plenty of food, rest, medicine or similar things—he knew it wouldn’t help at all and so Harry didn’t even _try_ to take that route—the contact between Harry and the locket would have to be broken for that, either by ending the existence of the horcrux (not necessarily brought about by its destruction) or by spending long enough without (and far away from) the locket that Harry’s magic could wean itself off its negative influence.

Their next clue for their horcrux hunt came when Harry, Ron and Hermione happened to overhear a conversation between Ted Tonks, Dean Thomas, a wizard named Dirk and two goblins by the names of Griphook and Gornuk. The group of humans and goblins were discussing what had led to each of them deciding to hide out at Hogwarts—how Dean had ended up in their company was a mystery and his story didn’t clear that up at all, but it was _not important right now_ because what the goblins had to say was _much more interesting_.

Gornuk said that the bank was ‘no longer under the sole control of my race’ and that someone had demanded of him to ‘retrieve’ the Sword of Gryffindor for them, which he had refused as it was ‘a duty ill-befitting my race’ and he was ‘not a house-elf’. He gave more details about the situation, to which the trio of eavesdroppers also paid close attention.

Eventually, the Golden Trio reeled in the Extendable Ears and retreated to the far back of the storeroom they had happened to be in when they had heard the mixed-race group talking.

Voldemort apparently wanted the sword, but it couldn’t be to make more horcruxes as he had already reached the number he wanted—likely not knowing that two were already gone and that one more was about to follow—so why would he waste resources on getting another pretty trinket _now_?

They managed to catch Dumbledore—who happened to be in the company of Professor Snape at the time—not too long afterwards to ask him about the sword and Voldemort’s interest in it with such an odd timing. The headmaster only twinkled his eyes at them and somehow made Snape pull out the sword of thin air to hand it over to a dumbfounded Harry— actually, it was more Snape roughly dumping it into Harry’s hands while wearing his usual sneer—without giving the man so much as a word or a signal.

“I believe Miss Granger can more adequately explain the properties of Goblin-made blades,” the aged wizard said with a wink. “You may already need to put the sword to use I see. Good luck,” the headmaster added, giving the spot where the locket hung underneath Harry’s uniform a sharp look.

Then, both adult wizards took their leave while the three speechless students were left standing in the hallway to gape at their disappearing backs.

“So,” Ron eventually said. “Any idea what that barmy old coot meant?”

Even Hermione’s automatic cry of “Ron!” didn’t discourage the redhead from pulling the answers out of their mutual female friend with all the considerable energy and stubbornness he was capable of.

Hearing Hermione’s usual long-winded explanation, of which the most important part was ‘Goblin-made blades imbibe only what strengthens them’ quickly led to the realisation that since Harry had killed a Basilisk with the sword in second year, it would now be impregnated with Basilisk venom—a substance strong enough that it could destroy a horcrux’ vessel.

Harry was swept along with the excitement in the wake of knowing that they had the means to destroy this horcrux, as well as the rest of them as soon as they got a hold of their containers, though he still had mixed feelings of indecision about it.

Ron was the most driven about getting around to ending the horcrux, perhaps precisely because he subconsciously felt the strong, dark influence he was under.

None of them were keen on releasing the highly dangerous magic of the locket during its destruction in a place as populated as Hogwarts, but they couldn’t think of a place where the risk wasn’t as great. With the dementors’ presence surrounding the school and stationed in Hogsmeade, they didn’t want to risk being caught when sneaking past them any more than they had to.

Besides, who knew what nasty side-effects being so close to so many dementors—more than would ever have been stationed at Azkaban at any given time, from what the Trio could gather—too often could have?

No, they preferred to find a spot somewhere in the castle, if they could find one. The Forbidden Forest would’ve been their immediate preferred location, but it just wasn’t feasible in this situation—the trip over the grounds would leave them too exposed, and the various creatures of the forest could either be harmed by the black magic of the locket or be a threat to the students themselves.

An abandoned corridor, secret passage or out-of-the-way room would not do either—there was always a chance that somebody would stumble upon it—and the two rooms that the Golden Trio could think of that were sufficiently isolated were not suitable for other reasons.

The Room of Requirement was at risk of having its integral magic damaged by the process of destroying the horcrux and there was also a real chance that the black magic residue of the room they would have it turn into would seep through to the other variations of the room—not to forget that those were also frequented by other people than just the three Gryffindors.

The Chamber of Secrets, on the other hand, could quite possibly be uniquely suited for the job—as far as the space Harry had killed the Basilisk was concerned—but it was possibly hiding some nasty surprises that could pose a danger to the seventh years if they went there for horcrux-breaking. If they were going to use it at all they would have to scout out the entire chamber and make sure everything’s safe, which would cost time and resources they simply _didn’t have_. They might even need a curse-breaker or two—and trying to maintain the secrecy in _that_ scenario would be an absolute _nightmare_.

So, in short: they were really in need of a place somewhere.

After a day of fruitless searching, Harry decided to spend his very late evening with a walk through Hogwarts’ halls, for the first time since he’d returned to the castle. Only one hallway in he was already joined by a certain female ghost.

“Hey, Harry,” she smiled at him. “You’re back.”

“Hello, Myrtle,” he returned, feeling his spirits lift somewhat by her mere presence. His current frustration and the ever-present exhaustion appeared to ease up a bit because of the pleasant company.

“I’ve found many new places since last time. Do you want to know?”

Harry agreed easily—her stories were much more interesting to listen to nowadays, and the two of them got along much better with all the bonding time the human and the ghost had had together. Also, Myrtle was cheerier and much less prone to crying ever since he had introduced her to the concept of regularly taking a stroll outside her bathroom.

Accompanying him had had a good effect on her, which was why he had eventually suggested she try it on her own, and she had taken to the idea with then-unimaginable joy. Apparently, nobody had thought to clue Myrtle in on that she could leave her bathroom in a different way than only through the plumbing—that though ghosts were tied to a place, it didn’t mean they couldn’t temporarily leave.

Anyone would get depressed if they were practically imprisoned inside very the same room they’d traumatically died in, not to mention that the rest of Hogwarts’ ghosts hadn’t as rigidly stayed where they’d died either—Harry had asked.

Myrtle rattled off a long list of hidden spots and deserted corners that she had investigated over the summer, each and every one of them accompanied by an anecdote or two.

She smiled and laughed often during the spinning of her tales, clearly overjoyed to have an audience that attentively listened to her. Harry couldn’t help but smile back at her, all the while encouraging the little ghost to entertain them both with yet more stories.

“So, Harry,” she eventually asked him. “What are you doing now?”

She had taken to asking him this question as a sort of counterpart to Harry’s usual question of ‘what have you found this time?’ because Harry didn’t really go on his walks to explore the castle—Harry walked to relax, to focus on his senses in a manner that was similar to meditation; he wandered wherever he felt like and went wherever he wanted.

Normal meditation didn’t suit Harry—it was one of the reasons that Occlumency hadn’t worked out at all—he was much too energetic and had too much of a chaotic mind for that sort of thing. Harry was not a thinker; he was a feeler, a wizard ruled by his instincts, and ordering him to clear his mind was like asking if Voldemort could be tickled into submission—theoretically possible, but not a feasible method to reach the intended goal.

Myrtle understood enough about Harry’s version of a walk that she never bothered with asking for whatever he might have seen, and therefore she always asked after his current life instead.

Harry was about to launch into descriptions of his activities of the summer, starting with being shipped back to the Dursleys, when he realised that he might possibly have found a solution for his current problem.

So he began by getting her up to speed on his latest task without going into too much detail—for example, he described the horcruxes simply as extremely dark artefacts of Voldemort’s that made him powerful enough to keep himself alive (which was all technically correct; just not the whole story)—while still giving Myrtle enough information that she had a reasonable understanding of what Hermione, Harry and Ron were looking for and why their first options didn’t meet their needs.

“Myrtle, would you know a spot for us that’ll let us get rid of the artefacts safely?”

She took a few minutes to think about it, then nodded a bit absentmindedly.

“What do you know about the dungeons?” she asked him then.

In the next moments Harry learned that although the dungeons were considered to be the home ground of the Slytherins, they really knew only a portion of it. While other floors tended to house shortcuts to a lot of other parts of the castle, the dungeons were so far out of the way that most people—including the Slytherins themselves—usually only bothered to learn the passages they needed, such as the way in, out, and the route to Potions class.

There were entire sections of the dungeons that had fallen into disuse, or had simply been forgotten—several parts had even been sealed off at some point in time.

In the days of the founders Hogwarts castle had been exactly that; a castle—it was meant to withstand sieges, and that came with not only extensive defensive fortifications but also with measures for after the battle was over.

Prisoners had to be stashed _somewhere_ , so there was a shielded part of the dungeons with cells to safely lock them into—as far away of the students as possible, naturally. Nearby were other amenities that had been very desirable in those times, and one of them was an honest-to-goodness _ritual chamber_.

Myrtle’s suggestion to use the ritual chamber as their location was absolutely brilliant and Harry was amazed by her _perfect_ solution for not only the obvious problems, but for also solving issues that he hadn’t breathed a word about to _anyone_ —because now, all of a sudden, Harry opting for the ritual destruction of the horcrux had just become a whole lot easier.

Ritual chambers were no longer being built—ever since rituals had been labelled ‘Dark Arts’ indiscriminately—and they were now considered a rarity. If one had survived the passage of time, it would usually be sealed to prevent it from being used for the now-forbidden practice of rituals.

They were usually made out of heavy stone or other very magic-resistant materials, always constructed so that they were nearly impervious to magic—no matter the form, quality or quantity of said magic—and because rituals always left enormous build-ups of potentially dangerous magic behind once the ceremony was over and done with, ritual chambers had measures that would let the magic drain away quickly and dissipate the focused energy safely.

In a way, destroying the locket would be like a ritual—an exceptionally destructive ritual—which once more proved that this remote, hidden ritual chamber was the perfect location. Harry couldn’t be happier with the development, and he told Myrtle so, prompting an impressive bout of blushing on the ghost girl’s part.

In the hours that followed, Harry was first led to the ritual chamber by a still-pleased-looking Myrtle, then Harry showed Ron and ‘Mione the way to the part of the dungeons where the chamber could be found—neither of his friends had gone to bed yet and were adamant that he show them the chamber _right now_ —and at last the three Gryffindors immediately prepared all that they could need for the locket’s destruction.

It was already nearing midnight when they started, all set up in the middle of the ritual chamber. Myrtle had opted to stay away, citing that she didn’t want to risk negatively influencing the process and possibly harming herself or either of the living students just to satisfy her curiosity.

As soon as all the safeguards were in place, Harry hissed at the locket with Parseltongue, commanding it to open, and it did. The locket and the sword hadn’t been in actual close proximity until now, as Harry had secretly taken measures to isolate the horcrux’ magic to the best of his ability while being as unobtrusive as he could, which meant that the locket had effectively been in its own ‘bubble’ of space for the entire time he’d had it, until the black-haired student had had to remove the protections so that they could go about destroying it.

Also, when the three students had each been preparing their own share of things for the ritual of destruction the Golden Trio would officially be preforming, Ron was the one who had gotten the sword to the ritual chamber while Harry had secretly been collecting some things of his own, separate from what Hermione had ordered him to get.

The locket’s magic lashed out at all three of them at the sight of Ron holding Gryffindor’s Sword, screeching, and Harry—who had been waiting for a moment like this—immediately fed the flow of unstable magic to make it explode where it otherwise wouldn’t have, even as he flooded Hermione and Ron’s minds with his own brand of dark magic to put them to sleep, all the while praying that he was not misjudging the amount of power he was using.

Both of his friends dropped to the floor immediately—or would have if the locket’s magic didn’t fling them away—but Harry didn’t have time to worry about their landing since the opening he’d created to do this was very small and he needed to work quickly.

Harry had ultimately decided that he was going to tackle the matter of which method to use for horcruxes on a case-by-case basis—he’d go along with destroying them, unless he found an opening that allowed him to do it differently. He had suspected that on some level he had long since decided to do it this way, because the option of going with the true ritual had never left his mind, no matter how unlikely the odds had grown that he could pull it off.

Because Harry was so intimately connected to the other side, he was actually able to use shortcuts that would have been impossible (read: lethal) for anyone else to use—and he sure as hell wasn’t going to recommend _anyone_ to attempt practicing shortcuts _at all_ when it came to rituals, would normally never use them himself, but he supposed that needs must.

The essential items for the version he was about to use had now been reduced to just a few odds and ends that he had easily gathered and Harry’s unique status let him skip entire parts of the proceedings, which further reduced the time it took to go through the steps of the ritual of unmaking.

Soon, all that was left was the actual dealing with the horcrux.

Harry felt the bindings holding the bit of Riddle to the locket unravel, become more and more frayed in a matter of seconds, while the ritual magic built up until was so thick that Harry could not just sense it, but _see it_ too; a gleaming mass of magical energy that opposed the black magic, pressing down upon it with the strength of a solid wall, even as the latter lashed out in frantic attempts to save itself.

Harry reached out with his senses to connect with the magic surrounding him, blending his own human magic into the mixture until he had some sort of a foothold. Then he called up and mixed in his _other_ magic—which was cold and dark where the type of only moments earlier was warm and light—until all the magic inside the chamber that didn’t belong to the locket could be wielded by Harry like it belonged to him.

Just before would truly start to tear into Tom’s horcrux, the Gryffindor reached out and scattered the wisp of power that had a hold on Ron. Then he made the magic convene where the locket was and proceeded to methodically tear the horcrux from its vessel and _rip_ the soul piece apart, shredding it so thoroughly that nothing from this world could ever fit the bits back together again—even as he recalled having already received the flayed and mangled shards of soul in the afterlife what seemed quite some time ago.

All too soon nothing even remotely resembling so much as an iota of soul was left behind in the ritual chamber and the black magic was rendered more-or-less harmless with how it was now without its source. Harry hurried to create a duplicate of the locket which he then force-fed as much of the lingering residue of black magic that he—in a manner of speaking—could get his hands on.

He forcefully impaled the fake artefact with the sword and watched as the black magic that had barely gotten the chance to latch on sizzled out once more. Only when Harry had hastily gotten rid of all the traces that pointed to the alternative route he’d taken in dealing with Riddle’s bit of soul—which included scooping up the cleansed locket to safely store it in his mokeskin pouch—could he afford to check on Hermione and Ron.

The numerous safeguards had done their job properly, it turned out, and both of his friends were soon up and going about their usual routines: Ron pacing agitatedly and cursing a blue streak, while Hermione was analysing what had happened.

Hermione immediately assumed that the locket had felt threatened by the presence of the sword and knocked both her and Ron out with the force of the earlier blast. She also theorised that the surroundings (aka the ritual chamber plus their measures) had to have interfered with the focus of the locket’s magic, weakening it from a lethal blow to merely one strong enough to knock them unconscious. Finally, she said that she was grateful that she had thought to set up so many layers of protection and even more safeguards.

It was not spoken aloud, but neither Ron or Hermione saw any reason to question how Harry had managed to stay conscious under the onslaught of magic long enough to put the sword through the locket—both of them simply put it down to Harry’s survival instincts and general stubbornness.

Harry wisely didn’t comment on anything that had happened, the way he also would have reacted if he’d just actually destroyed a horcrux and in the process gotten attacked by its magic. He tucked the supposedly ‘destroyed’ horcrux in his pocket while his friends watched.

One more down, another three to go.

Things were quiet once more in the month that followed, and while he did get some stuff done during that time, at the end of it Harry thought that it was high time he’d get back to his _other_ somewhat urgent task—one that had to do with his status as the Master of Death.

The three artefacts he’d collected—they had once been known as the Hallows of Death, so that was the name he would go with until Harry found out what their modern names had become—had never left his side since that fateful night of awakening.

The cloak was always in his mokeskin pouch and the only Hallow that his friends truly knew about, while he kept the stone and wand somewhat half-heartedly hidden on his person—Harry wouldn’t mind if his closest friends found out, but he _did_ make the effort not to openly carry any of the three Hallows, as the discovery of those last two in particular would create an uproar at the very least.

Harry had by now experienced what he’d already suspected last summer: the Hallows were sentient in some manner, had varying behaviour that could be interpreted as being the result of having their own personalities. They weren’t _aware_ in the sense that they had a consciousness, but they _did_ have moods and preferences that they expressed through the fluctuations of their magic and their connection to Harry.

The wand was aggressive and impatient, constantly urging Harry to attack, to _act_ , to jump into the next stages of his plans long before it was time—which arguably made it the hardest of the Hallows to deal with, as well as the one most likely to buck under Harry’s control.

The stone was a tricky one, whispering sweet temptations in his ears, all with irregular timing to throw off his balance, trying to seduce Harry to _use it use it use it_ and simultaneously encouraging Harry to do so whenever it suited him—it was the most persistent and unpredictable of them all.

The cloak, however, was rather tame in comparison; that one was in fact more apathetic than anything else, always trying to hold Harry back, nudging him towards standing on the sidelines, continually trying to convince Harry that things were too much trouble or cost too much energy or weren’t worth it—all of them thoughts that were distracting at best and bad for his self-esteem at worst.

Their influences were quite annoying, mainly because they did nothing but hinder Harry, and even now, with the moment of his awakening already having passed, he was still unable to go anywhere without the Hallows following like particularly stubborn clingy children.

Not only that, but they didn’t even work well with Harry’s magic—not as well as they should—in fact, this specific set of Hallows just didn’t fit the latest Master of Death at all.

Harry knew that the three artefacts didn’t match him because they were made especially for the Master of Death before him—his previous incarnation. That person had been much like Neville was in first year; painfully shy, hesitant to the point of standing still if she wasn’t urged to act, easily scared, too emotionally involved with every odd person she met—and that was why the Hallows were the way they were.

The Hallows of Death were more than simply conduits for Harry’s magic and symbols of his title—they were meant to complete both his magic and his personality, to balance his human flaws and help ground him as a mortal carrying the burden of being connected to the other realm.

Even so, the situation couldn’t—shouldn’t—continue the way it was, what with the current set of terribly ill-suiting Hallows slowly driving Harry mad at a steady rate. He would’ve had to deal with them eventually—Harry just hadn’t thought it would be so soon.

So—after having told Ron and Hermione that he needed a break from everything—Harry set out once again on his own, this time to deal with his recalcitrant Hallows. Both of his friends thought that Harry would find a hidden spot somewhere in Hogwarts to sequester himself for the coming days, far away from the overgrown Hogwarts population—but Harry unfortunately didn’t have the room for indulging himself that way, though he dearly wished he could.

No, he ventured out of Hogwarts, past the storm cloud of dementors surrounding the premises of the castle grounds, following where his instincts led, as all the while they kept forgetting to inform his mind of their decisions.

Harry was at the starting point of a path that all of his predecessors had walked, one that was never physically the same yet still matched all its previous forms in essence and importance. It was the Hallows’ Route, the road that was one of the aspects that separated the true-born Masters of Death from those that liked to fashion themselves to be a bearer of the title, but never could become one.

Walking the Hallows’ Route was a prerogative for the true Master of Death alone, and there would only ever be one single person to set foot on it, and in this day and age that person was named Harry Potter. He would always have walked it eventually, but hadn’t quite planned on it being this soon—circumstances being what they were, Harry had been forced to move it to the present.

The first apparition brought him to a rolling meadow, the repetitive landscape only interrupted by a single prominent hill that was far larger than any other. Harry strolled up to the top of the hill, taking his time for each step he made with an unhurried pace, sinking away in an unbothered state of calm contemplation and quiet observation.

There was an old tree at the very top, grown crooked by age and damage over the years, that nevertheless still stood proudly on its hill. This time of the year meant that the branches were almost completely bereft of leaves, clearly showing that its bark was furrowed and the wood that was peeking out here and there, where the bark was damaged, showed white-yellowed wood that was darkened to nearly black at places.

Harry walked up to the base of the tree and laid his hand on its trunk with nothing but a small sigh at the contact with the rough bark. A soft green glow underneath his hand for just a moment answered him, prompting Harry to reach out and pluck a specific branch off the tree with a nod of thanks.

The second apparition landed Harry on the outskirts of Azkaban island, the ease with which the student landed signifying that the anti-apparition wards were down, or at least too weak to fulfil their primary purpose.

He walked, unruffled, right through the throng of dementors milling about the island and its prison—for once remaining completely unaffected by their collective demoralising aura—looking, watching, waiting.

Soon, the Gryffindor spotted a single black-cloaked figure detach itself from the rest and glide towards the other side of the island, all alone. Harry followed at a safe distance until it stood on the very edge of the cliff this part of the coast consisted of, before he closed in on the lone dementor.

The being seemed to shiver as it turned around and presumably caught sight of the young wizard that was approaching. It appeared to deflate, almost as if it gave up on fighting because it could no longer muster the will to live, and before Harry ever reached the dementor it went down, its black cloak rippling as the creature itself fell down the few feet to the ground in a manner resembling a fluttering leaf.

Harry once again reached out with a single hand, somehow completely unconcerned that he was about to stick it underneath the cloak of a dementor, and eventually pulled what seemed to be a chunk of jet-black crystals from the creature’s body.

The third apparition ended with Harry coming face-to-face with another dark creature resembling a living black shroud, except this one looked less like it wore the garment and more like it _was_ the shroud. All Harry did was hold out both his arms in a soundless request, and the being responded by draping its shroud over the young man’s arms and its remains vanishing in wisps of black smoke immediately after.

The teen spared a moment of silence to silently wish the being—as well as the dementor of earlier—a peaceful rest, not wasting much thought on the fact that he was essentially (sort of) praying to himself with this reflexive human response.

The fourth and final apparition saw Harry back at the Forbidden Forest, but still far beyond the edge of Hogwarts’ wards, where he started to wander amongst the trees, unafraid of whatever could decide to come out and attack. He was joined by the herd of thestrals in minutes, the inquisitive creatures following him all the way back out of the forest, and even then they did not leave.

Harry soundlessly approached one of them and made to lift himself onto its back. The thestral in question did not protest at all, seemed even to be quite interested in the human now sitting on its back.

They were airborne the next second.

For the corner of his eye Harry could barely catch a glimpse of a few centaurs standing underneath the trees at the very edge of the forest, whom had come all the way to see him off, before the forest disappeared in the distance.

Trusting the thestral he rode to know where he needed to go, Harry spent his time during the flight taking in the breathtakingly beautiful night sky, watching the rest of the herd that was flying along and enjoying the ride—not even bothering to look for landmarks in order to find out where he was brought to.

When Harry jumped down from the thestral onto muddy forest ground, he simultaneously pulled out a hair from the creature’s tail in one smooth move. The strand he held was smoky and wispy in his hand, and felt mostly like he was holding onto a bit of cloud, but Harry had memories of many other thestral hairs he’d handled before, thus he wasn’t at all daunted by the prospect of dealing with this one.

A shallow bow of thanks from Harry was all it took to send the thestrals on their way back to Hogwarts, neighing in what seemed like either greeting, goodbye or a wish for good luck before their silhouettes vanished into the dark night.

Now that Harry had reached the final stop on the Hallows’ Route, the one where the actual magic would take place, a dark forest that he would only later learn the name of—which was Forest of Dean—he set out to complete the very last part before he was free to return to Hogwarts.

Deep inside the forest, the raven-haired wizard found a small pond that had frozen over with a thin layer of ice. It called to him on an instinctive level, signifying that this was to be the place where this eon’s Hallows were to be born.

A ward set around the pond and the surrounding clearing—giving the young wizard ample room to move—would ensure privacy for the duration of the work Harry was about to do and would also double as an enclosure for the magic he was about to perform.

Harry settled on the cold ground near the pond and he spread first the Hallows, then the materials he’d collected out in front of him, taking his time to position them all within easy reach.

Around him, magic started building up, very much similar to how power had gathered during the ritual of unmaking only a month earlier, but this time the energy was solely of the surroundings, with just a hint of the other world, and not in any way originating from as depraved a source as a horcrux—this magic was life and air and healing, accompanied by a bit of power, fire and change.

Bolstered with the great flow of magical energy, Harry set to meticulously pry the Hallows apart, separating the power from the objects. Unlike before with the horcrux, it was not the vessel that was most important to save from destruction—it was the _essence_ that Harry needed, for lack of a better word.

At the end of the proceedings, Harry was left holding three small masses of concentrated magic with highly unusual flavours, all three unique in both composition and structure. They were the Hallows’ cores, the very essence of what made up their abilities and—up to a point—their identities as well.

It had happened sometimes that the Hallows had not been available to the Master of Death when they fully awakened to their power, and in that case the fledgling Master of Death would have to expend copious amounts of magic in order to recreate the Hallows from scratch rather than reusing the previous set.

The birth of the new versions would then involve recalling and transferring the major powers from the old set, often from great distances, to the new Hallows—leaving the old artefacts reduced to more ordinary power levels and without any of their famed special abilities.

Harry was very fortunate that he had gotten them all in time to smoothen the process of his awakening because he really didn’t need another burden added to his list—hunting the old shells of the Hallows alongside the horcruxes would have been tricky at best and getting around to destroy Riddle’s bits of soul was difficult enough without adding a similar, yet even more secretive task to his workload.

Picking up the branch lying at his feet was accompanied by a bit of a lightheaded feeling that Harry compared to being watched so intently that it made you feel the pressure physically, which prompted the Gryffindor to take a moment to close his eyes and use his senses to search for the source.

Green eyes snapped open a second later when their owner realised that he somehow felt like his two halves were closer together than normal—as if the distance between them had temporarily shortened. What he had been feeling was the increased _presence_ of the other him that was just as focused on the proceedings as Harry himself was, which had somehow forced aside the time difference of the dimensions for this moment only, strengthening the connection between them until it had become direct to the point of instantaneous.

With his two perspectives for once perfectly aligned, Harry set to finishing the job he had come to do with renewed determination.

The bark was stripped from the branch, the entirety cut and carved to the right size and shape with a small knife Harry’d brought along, then hollowed out with great care. The thestral hair was prepared for its function with delicate precision by the somewhat rough hands smoothing it out until it was perfectly glossy, then finally put inside the hole of the former branch, after which Harry prepared the other section that would later be attached to the end where the hole sat.

He fashioned the second component from a bit he’d earlier cut off from the branch, specifically a part that had been directly attached to the end where the hole now was—this was on purpose so it would all fit more snugly together.

Next came the fist-sized black mass of crystals that he had to reduce in size before he could work with it, so Harry repeatedly stuck the blade of the knife into cracks between crystals as a lever to wrench the unneeded pieces loose. By the time he was done he held a single, rough but unmarred, crystal that was shaped like two pyramids stuck together—Harry estimated its dimensions to be slightly bigger than the width of his thumb at its widest.

The skin of the shroud creature only needed to be carefully cleaned before it was ready for the last step of the process.

The old vessels had by now crumbled to dust on the forest floor, worn out by decades of use and the forceful way they’d lost their cores—no matter how Harry had tried to go easy on them, the integral magic had still been torn away quite forcefully in order to separate them from their containers.

Joining each of the cores with the right vessel took quite some time, for it was a delicate process that was perhaps best described as manually attaching single strands of power to the magic inherent to the materials that the containers were made of. It was therefore not a surprise that by the time Harry was done dawn was only about a scant hour away.

He held up the wand, with its body and handle now properly assembled, and performed the motions for a shield spell. The new Elder wand obligingly channelled Harry’s magic for the spell, calling the gleaming defensive wall into existence without any resistance.

The black Stone of Shades—Harry _really_ needed to find out the modern names of the Hallows—had been put back into the big golden _ugly_ frame for easier carrying and handling, so when Harry picked it up from where he’d put it down after combining its core and vessel, he was able to smoothly make the required three turns one-handed without delay. For a few moments only, he summoned a number of impersonal shades from the beyond, then sent them away.

At last Harry tested the new Cloak of Invisibility, draping it over himself in comfortable familiarity, then went to the edge of the frozen pond to look down at his own reflection in the cracked ice. Naturally, there wasn’t one to be seen until he took the cloak back off.

Harry smiled happily at the realisation that he had been successful in remaking the Hallows, then became elated when he felt that his bond with the artefacts had become much, _much_ less strained compared to earlier. He _was_ disappointed to note that the other him had become distant once again, the void between realms having reasserted itself in its normal headache-inducing time-mangling state in the meantime—but even that wasn’t enough to completely dampen his cheerful mood.

The clearing was quickly unwarded and every bit of leftover materials discarded, while the dust that had once been Hallows was slowly but surely being picked up by the light breeze traveling through the forest.

Harry cast a last glance around to check for things he’d forgotten to take care of, but found nothing of the sort, and eventually turned his back on the pond to leave, the power of the new Hallows softly humming in the back of his mind.

“Lead me home,” he whispered to the wand of elder sitting in one of his holsters, to the black stone set in a big gold ring that hung from a chain around his neck, to the silvery hooded cloak slung around his shoulders. “Show me the way back to Hogwarts.”

And they did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...And that wraps up this part. Like with the first chapter, several characters have snuck in their points of view while I was writing. For this chapter Draco (the only one that was planned), Remus and Neville have had their say. Ron nearly managed to get in too, but I could eventually divert him to be satisfied with his monologue/rant.
> 
> I will be skipping from fic to fic from here on out, updating in no particular order.


	3. Second step – Alias

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which the role of Death is getting rather crowded._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I'm absolutely not a fan of announcing or otherwise discussing my other works in the author's notes because I hate inflicting confusion on whomever reads them who is not a reader of the work that is mentioned, but in this case I'll make an exception as I wouldn't be able to get the word out any other way. 
> 
> I have encountered the dreaded writer's block for my fic AST so for the time being I'm focussing on my other works. It is not abandoned, merely delayed.
> 
> That's it, thank you for putting up with me. Now, when I finished the previous chapter of this fic, I had not planned to start on the next bit until I'd written some for my other works but the plot bunny still wouldn't let me go. Hence the sooner existence of the very chapter below this AN.
> 
> Please be aware that this part starts in the month-long period mentioned in the previous chapter, right before Harry goes to fix his Hallows.
> 
> Happy holidays, everyone, and enjoy your reading.

In between the frequent visions of Voldemort chasing after the shade of Grindelwald, Harry had a lot of time on his hands, most of which was spent on walks and bouts of introversion.

There were no official lessons at Hogwarts this year, and the classes that the school did offer were unofficial, mostly battle-oriented, and open to anyone regardless of age—although in practice the line was drawn at children too young to know what they were doing. DADA was, of course, prominently present on all the various schedules of courses put onto the common rooms’ announcement boards.

Harry gave lessons sometimes, but he encouraged members of the DA to take up teaching as well, so it frequently ended up as a lecture given by Harry while the actual lesson was handled by other DA members. Most members, and graduated members especially, were by now knowledgeable enough to be considered better qualified than the vast majority of official DADA teachers Hogwarts had seen over at least the last two decades.

This in turn had made applying for DA membership popular, causing the association’s numbers to rapidly increase with every week that passed. Fortunately, Neville, Ginny and Luna had matters well in hand and organised the inflow of new people in classes that trained together, putting each group of people under supervision of one or two original members who had volunteered to act as mentors and would keep a watchful eye on their progress.

Meanwhile, the Golden Trio used their free time as they pleased.

Ron was steadily recovering from the dark magic infection he’d had for the last few months, though Harry still kept a close eye on his friend’s condition just in case. The redhead had taken to catch up on news he’d missed or had been too busy for until now. In absence of more leads Hermione was holed up in the library, attempting to find more useful information to continue the hunt. So far, she hadn’t had much luck.

Out of boredom, Harry put more effort into dodging Snape’s attempts at spying on him, a situation that eventually devolved into some magical spy variation of cat-and-mouse. Snape seemed to get more and more frustrated with how his skills somehow weren’t enough while Harry was just focused on utilising both old and new knowledge and abilities he hadn’t had time to practice yet.

The master spy would get his moment eventually, but Harry wasn’t ready just yet to weather an interrogation on that high a level. _At some point I will be_ , Harry kept reminding himself, _someday I am ready to have that conversation_ — _just not right now._

That said, there was somebody else he needed to speak with, and the time was right for that conversation to take place.

Malfoy found him first despite Harry’s plans, catching the Gryffindor alone in a room somewhere on the fifth floor as the teenage hero was spending his time overlooking the grounds through the glass of a window.

The wizarding aristocrat politely asked for a moment of his time, and Harry agreed in spite of his desire to keep watching the dark landscape of Hogwarts. The wand gave a soft hum in the back of his head, as if to tell Harry that it wanted to be used, but the Gryffindor quashed the impulse with the speed—not ease—of much practice.

Malfoy lead the way to the astronomy tower with a barely-there hesitance in his step, clearly wanting but not daring to look back at Harry, impressively denying his instinctive urge to keep the threat in his sights. Seeing this made Harry decide to go easy on the Malfoy heir when the conversation would start.

Too soon for Draco’s liking he reached the very top of the astronomy tower. It was completely deserted, as he’d counted on when he had chosen the time and place to confront Potter once again, but that didn’t mean that part of him didn’t wish that there was an audience, a crowd to hide amongst.

Grandfather’s presence weighted heavily on edge of Draco’s senses, there—yet not—as had been the case since the spirit had appeared in the Room of Requirement. It added to Draco’s nervosity over what he was about to do—would grandfather be forced to come to Potter’s aid if Draco made a misstep?

With a gesture Potter did something to the entrance they had come through, sealing the door with all the finality of a heavy-security Gringotts vault closing somewhere deep below ground. Draco was not sure if knowing they would not be interrupted made him feel safer or more vulnerable.

The view of the dark sky was spectacular from up there, but neither seventh year paid attention to the sight that could be enjoyed even from where they were stood like statues in the middle of the room, facing each other and refusing to look elsewhere.

“What are you?” Draco eventually asked, echoing his question of a year earlier. He was fairly sure that Potter had an answer for him this time.

“I am the Master of Death,” Potter replied simply, his expression carefully neutral.

“That is not the whole truth, is it?” Draco said then, unable to suppress a small frown.

“No,” Potter agreed, now visibly amused. “It is not.”

Draco could almost _see_ the cold begin to creep back into Potter’s face, and shivered in response.

“You are more than that,” Draco murmured out loud, once he thought he could control his voice. “More than just a lucky human collector of the Artefacts of Death.”

“Yes,” Potter agreed again, easily, his lips beginning to curl upwards by a fraction.

“Then, what are you?” _The third time is the charm, as they say._

Potter gave Draco a _look_ with his vibrant eyes filled with eternity, wearing the gaze of a God—and dear Merlin, had these eyes always looked so deathly?

The Slytherin couldn’t remember ever seeing the colour of Potter’s eyes as any other variation than the exact same shade as the Killing curse, had even always mentally referred to them as Avada Kedavra-green. In hindsight, _that_ should have been a big clue as to Boy Wonder’s otherworldly nature.

Draco had somehow never made the connection between the failed killing curse that was so famous, Potter’s constant survival when he should have died and the deathly green that had been staring Draco right in the face each time they’d squared off.

The owner of these eyes was surprisingly forthright with his next answer.

“I am what you would call an Avatar.” Potter gave a full smile this time, one that held too many teeth and only barely covered that the supposedly Golden Boy had to be carrying the knowledge of some nature of terrible truth. “If I am to be more specific, I suppose that the proper term is the Avatar of Death.”

Nothing more was said after that, and Malfoy fled as soon as Harry lifted the barrier he’d earlier placed onto the only exit. The Gryffindor didn’t blame him, as he thought he also would run after having had a conversation like that—especially considering that Harry’d essentially admitted to being a vessel to the personification of Death, and _the only one_ at that.

He was actually quite impressed that his classmate had held himself together at all—and even more so with how the Slytherin had somehow found out on his own that Harry’s title had more depth, then found the courage somewhere to confirm it with Harry personally. Somehow, Draco Malfoy had ended up being the one that knew the most about Harry—and the lion hadn’t even had to do much of anything for it.

It brought a sort of distant fondness to Harry’s heart, strong enough that he felt he might well favour the pure-blood should the occasion arise.

Pushing the whining mental tug of the stone down, Harry turned his gaze to the nearest shadow and waited. His unspoken order was obeyed without hesitation by the soul of Abraxas Malfoy, who stepped out of the shadow to kneel soundlessly at Harry’s feet.

The ice-cold magic that Harry had mostly held back for the youngest Malfoy’s sake the teen wizard now let flow freely, filling him with the part of his consciousness that he would normally only focus on the other world.

“Envoy,” he breathed, voice barely above a whisper, as he was wont to do in this state of mind. “Your task.”

There was no need for more words, as the order was perfectly understood by the figure on the stone floor. The former Lord Malfoy—now looking to be somewhere around the age of Lucius—lifted his head fractionally and began listing what he had done, what he had seen, all in his usual monotone with as few syllables as possible.

When the report had reached its conclusion, the deceased Malfoy once again hung his head low—listening for new orders or any other sound Harry would make. The man looked as if he would be content to wait in that same position for all eternity and not so much as shift or speak a word in the meantime.

The student took his time to mull over the information, to think of what he would do to arrange the future events to his liking. With his total age being well into the range of ‘ancient’, even if one only counted his collective human years, there was no urge to set things into motion too soon and neither was there a need to focus only on the immediate future—an effect that was strengthened even more while he was pulling onto the connection as much as he was now.

Finally, decision made, the seventh year gave his orders in a clear, precise tone of voice, then dismissed the soul to send it back to work. Abraxas stood, then bowed low, before disappearing from view once more.

Meanwhile, somewhere on the other side of the castle, Draco’s mind was still reeling from the knowledge of Potter’s nature.

He had briefly contemplated the possibility that Potter could be an Avatar, but hadn’t thought it likely—until Potter himself had confirmed it, that was. His classmate was a God in a mortal shell and Draco had caught the being’s attention, for better or for worse.

It had confirmed the Malfoy heir’s theory without a doubt, though. The Master of Death was but an alternative title for the Avatar of Death, possibly to hide the fact that Death had an Avatar at all.

There were various ways in which Gods could contact the living world through a living being, the simplest form of which being through visions of Seers, while a more intimate connection came through appearing in the trances of shamans—known as mediums to muggles—and a yet more direct bond came from temporarily possessing a channeler.

Avatars, though—they were very different. They were not anything like channelers, or shamans, or even those who See; they were only human on the outside—their minds, personalities, souls, and everything else, were completely different.

No, Avatars were just a single half-step below the Gods themselves and carried a fragment of what passed for a God’s soul instead of a mortal one.

Entities of Power usually had an Avatar or two running around the world at any given time, along with a number of channelers, mediums and shamans dedicated to them alone. However, there were always Ancient Forces that didn’t have most of these for one reason or another—personal preference being one of them, but also strange quirks or more practical reasons were among them.

The stronger the Old Power, the more vessels it needed to support its power, but at some point the load simply became too much to bear—therefore, especially the Powers at the very top of the ladder often lacked any of the direct connections to the mortal world. The lower-intensity forms of connecting with the mortal world were still possible for them, though.

Death was a Power far beyond Ancient—‘super-powered’ didn’t even begin to cover the tremendous might of that particular Eternal Force—and as such was not supposed to have any actual mortal vessels, for the sheer might of its presence would crush any living form it touched and distort the surroundings far beyond what living beings could bear.

There were only a few beings that could be said to be in the same league as Death, and for the aforementioned reason none of them had Avatars, while only a few of them had channelers—Death was said to be one of those without channelers—which made mediums the highest intensity connection that all of them shared.

Yet, Potter somehow acted as the sole Avatar to the personification of Death, bearing the full brunt of the weight this being put upon its vessels with nobody else to share the burden with. He was not just _an_ Avatar, but _the_ Avatar of Death, and thus in essence the very master Draco’s grandfather served.

Draco let out a shaky breath in an effort to relax and _think_.

Clearly, he would have to be ever more careful in dealing with Potter. Before this revelation he’d known that the other wizard was an unknown entity with potentially boundless benefits to offer as an ally, though it presumably came at extremely high risks—but now Draco was sure that he had enormously underestimated both aspects of the equation.

It would be truly difficult to gain and keep favour with a literal God, but if he _did_ manage to hold onto it somehow…

Well—the possibilities were endless.

Eventually Harry got fed up with doing nothing but giving the occasional lecture or being in meetings all day long and began instead spending time with Hermione in the library—Ron being too hard to track down nowadays meant that Harry would have to wait for better moments on that front.

The first days they didn’t speak much, just spent their time pursuing their own leads or interests, but about a week later Hermione suddenly put her books aside and asked Harry: “Are you alright?”

“As well as I can be in this situation,” he told her honestly, too tired and bored to bother with his usual deflecting.

“You’ve been looking exhausted lately,” she murmured half to herself and half to her friend.

It was an astute observation, and entirely correct—Harry had been steadily getting more tired ever since obtaining the locket, continuing to decline even after he’d gotten rid of Riddle’s mutilated bit of soul. It showed in his gait, in the dark bags underneath his eyes and how his temper was more volatile in ways that he had no energy to properly express.

The reason for that was that the trio of Hallows was wearing him out more than the harmful magic of the horcrux ever could. Phantom exhaustion was nowhere near as hard to deal with as actual exhaustion on multiple levels—emotional, mental and magical in this case.

When speaking purely about the psychical aspect Harry had plenty of energy—more than he knew what to do with, honestly—but nothing to use it for, and that made him antsy.

Being worn out, moody, agitated _and_ bored did not mix well, so he’d been taking care to keep his distance from everyone else.

“I am,” Harry answered. “I’ll have to do something about it soon, or it’ll just get worse.”

“Can I help?” she asked, giving him a worried but sharp once-over, not even stopping her examination when Harry shook his head in the negative.

“No,” he added, just to be clear. “You can’t do anything in this case, ‘Mione. I wish you could—it would make things easier.”

She subsided again with a sigh, knowing better than to protest at this point.

Hermione had secretly been looking up magical heritages in-between her searches for new leads. She felt a bit guilty about not telling Harry she’d been investigating, but not enough to consider telling him even a moment sooner than when she deemed herself ready.

The witch had been helping her friend with all the sudden changes throughout last school year and when all of them had returned after the interruption in the summer, it was only to admittedly find themselves with a lot of things to do, but with enough lulls in between where there hadn’t been anything to do but wait—and yet they had not once returned to the subject of Harry’s inheritance.

She’d thought it suspicious, and had theorised that in the meantime Harry had either figured out everything there was to know (which was next to impossible), had somehow lost all the newly gained abilities as well as his interest in them (even more impossible), gotten enough of a grip onto it that he didn’t need any more help (possible but unlikely), or found some dangerous truth that had caused his people-saving-thing to kick in to protect Hermione and Ron from the repercussions…

Now, _that_ last bit was something that might actually be true.

To be fair, Hermione _had_ asked Harry about the lack of keeping an eye on his developing abilities back when they had been staying at Grimmauld Place.

“It’s come to a head recently,” he had replied to her queries. “Now I have a lot more to get used to, I suppose.”

“Is your inheritance that”— _don’t say abnormal_ —“unusual?” she had asked.

“It’s lonely,” Harry had decided on after a long pause, looking so heartbreakingly sad that she hadn’t been able to bring herself to push further.

Hermione had seen the looks she and Ron had been given since after Harry’s birthday had come and gone, though she wasn’t sure if Ron had noticed. There had been many instances where Harry had been biting his lip to keep silent when there was obviously something that he’d dearly wished to say, but there had never been a right moment for Hermione to ask him what it was about.

With the hectic events following one after another she had let the matter rest until now, but no longer.

“Harry… Is there anything you can tell me?” Hermione decided to ask at last. The seemingly simple words hid a more elaborate question that she found herself unable to articulate—something that was luckily understood by the recipient.

The black-haired teen wizard sitting at her side took his time to formulate an answer.

“There are so many things that I’ll never be able to tell anyone,” he started. “Horrifying truths and dangerous knowledge that could easily cost you your life if I let something slip.

Believe me: it’s better that I don’t tell you more.”

The forlorn look was back in his eyes, and it pulled at her heartstrings in ways that trounced kicked puppies and drowned kittens. Still, she wouldn’t let that stop her; things had gone on long enough and it was high time that somebody intervened before Harry got himself any further in a tizzy.

“Please, Harry,” she pushed gently. “Isn’t there something, _anything_ at all that you can give me?”

When Harry still didn’t give any sign of being convinced to give up so much as a pebble-sized piece of his latest secret, Hermione continued: “If the knowledge itself is so dangerous, I want the parts that aren’t—if only to be aware of what I must avoid. Besides, danger is a constant in your life and everybody around you—” Here she gave her friend a sharp look that prevented an unneeded apology from passing the other Gryffindor’s lips. Luckily, Harry knew better than to persist with his usual self-sacrificing ways when Hermione looked at him like that.

“…through no fault of your own, shares in that danger to some degree. But despite that, Ron and I and everyone else, we’ve made it through alive and well. How much more deadly can this thing be compared to all the other ones we’ve survived before?”

Ah, there she had him, if the faint gleam in that pair of green eyes was anything to go by.

“Let me deal with it, Harry. Holding onto it is only stressing you more than is healthy. I swear that I’ll be careful.”

It was quiet for a long time after that, but the witch wasn’t worried. She had won the argument without a doubt—all that was left was to give Harry some space to come to peace with his loss.

In the end, her classmate turned to her with a serious expression on his face.

“Listen, Hermione,” he told her with the tone of voice the young hero only ever used in matters of life and death. “Since I can’t change your mind, at least promise me that you’ll stick with the parts that I give you—that you’ll not go looking for more information before I say you can.”

She made that additional promise easily; it was not every day Hermione won an argument against Harry without at least a week’s worth of battle beforehand—the dark-haired wizard was more stubborn than a mule when the mood struck him, as she well knew by now.

Hermione couldn’t help but add to what she’d already said: “You really shouldn’t worry about my reaction to whatever it is that you’re hinting around. Knowledge is my speciality, after all.”

Harry quirked a dry smile at her and answered without actually answering anything. “Just like how you accuse me of having no sense of self-preservation or restraint whatsoever in combat situations and Ron of not having enough of either when it comes to dealing with emotions—having ‘the emotional range of a teaspoon’, as you so aptly put it—believe me when I tell you that you lack both in the area of research.”

When Hermione thought it over she was forced to concede the point—in hindsight, the words _were_ a meaningful reply to her previous comment after all.

A rustle of cloth and the sound of wood sliding over stone had the witch look up to where her friend was in the process of standing up from his chair.

“Knowing you,” Harry commented conversationally, “you’ll be wanting to start right away.”

He was right, of course, and it was at moments like these that Hermione could truly comprehend just how long they’d known each other—was it already five and a half years?—and how well their group of three understood what made the others tick, even if the knowledge was so far from their own logic that they couldn’t apply what they had learned on themselves.

Harry turned to step into an exceptionally narrow gap between two bookshelves that she hadn’t even seen was there, a fond smile on his face that Hermione only caught a glimpse of before he disappeared in the dark aisle. She followed her famous friend with none of the lethal grace he possessed, but with just as much determination to see her chosen course through to the very end.

A moment later the dark silhouette vanished from in front of her eyes, making Hermione panic for a second before she spotted Harry’s amused green eyes watching her from the even heavier darkness of another opening between shelves somewhere on her left.

Eventually, they emerged from the maze of aisles into a clearly abandoned part of the library. Though the space was fractionally lighter, there still wasn’t much light to see by, and everything was covered with fine grey dust that was partially whipped up into the air when they passed.

Hermione spent a moment wondering how Harry kept managing to sneak and creep seemingly everywhere he wanted without detection, mused on how she at times saw him disappear into even the tiniest bit of shadow and recalled how he had excellent skill at somehow picking up crucial information—which all reminded her of the spy movies that she watched sometimes. His magical heritage—she assumed it was by now properly stabilised—had only made this more pronounced, if probably only to her observant eyes.

The witch had long since pegged Harry’s unknown animagus form as either a feline of some kind (black panther, lynx or housecat were her first thoughts), or a small yet agile variation of a bird of prey (a falcon, or possibly a hawk). As the third most likely option she would go for a cervine variety, like his father’s form had been. In all the possibilities, though, Hermione could only imagine animal Harry with one specific colour scheme: a pitch-black coat coupled with his beautiful green eyes—it just fit him best.

All that remained now was to find out what animal form Harry had, and there was no doubt in her mind that it would be one from the aforementioned groups.

It was in that neglected corner of the library that Harry turned back to Hermione to give her a look that told her to follow his lead. The witch nodded in both response and acceptance at that, perfectly willing to go along with it.

She was only half surprised when Harry looked to the side and called for Kreacher.

The old elf looked happier this time, though still uncomfortable in Harry’s presence. He was beginning to show more genuine care for his wizard, in the no-nonsense manner of an aged servant well-used to the wiles of rich youngsters that he was not afraid to bully into behaving if necessary.

The brown-haired witch had recently come to the realisation that there was yet another thing at play there, and she felt somewhat guilty for immediately having assumed the worst.

Harry had the elf bring Hermione several specific books, apparently knowing exactly what titles were needed. Among them were ‘Beyond the world’ by A. Woodsworth, ‘Higher Order’ by I. Krawl, several tomes that only bore names like ‘Olde and Ancient Forces’, ‘Godword’ or ‘The Powers That Be’ on their fronts, a five-part series of ‘A Comprehensive Encyclopaedia of Gods, Higher Beings and Eternal Forces’ and even a number of scrolls far older than anything else she’d ever seen before.

All of them looked at least old, if not like priceless heirlooms carefully preserved, and one of the tomes gave off a distinctly unsettling feeling. Harry insisted that they were all safe to handle when he noticed the way she was looking at them, and the other Gryffindor took him at his word—presumably he was so sure of this because he’d read them already, though the teen witch’s instincts did not quite agree with that assumption.

Kreacher seemed to be quite unsure what Hermione needed the books for, but didn’t protest or inquire, making Hermione all the more curious. She should’ve thought of asking Kreacher what it was that the elf obviously sensed much better than humans, but the witch had already promised Harry not to snoop around for another information source.

“Start with these,” Harry said, giving her a decidedly amused look. “A couple of them are the most important, the rest is just to supplement the knowledge. After all—” His expression turned fondly exasperated. “…You’ll before long just be asking for more information to use as cross-references and different sources to compare your findings to—not to mention that you’ll be wanting to quality-check _everything_. I thought it best to pre-empt your requests.”

Oh, he truly knew her reading habits far too well.

“This one,” Harry continued as he pointed at one of the scrolls, “and these and this and that,” all the while indicating the relevant scrolls, books or tomes, “are the essential stuff.” He then picked them up and put the lot to the side for Hermione to have a good look at, sending Kreacher away with a thank you right after.

“Well, you can do your worst from here on out, I suppose,” Harry said, almost too cheerfully.

“I will,” she answered absently, her head already on the material in front of her. The male Gryffindor shook his head in amusement before he silently left Hermione to her own devices.

The last thing she heard from her friend was: “Let me know when you’ve gone through this pile—I’ll have the next round ready for you.”

In the days after that memorable conversation saw Harry walking around the castle with a slight feeling of elation. ‘Mione had caught up at last, had finally pulled and pushed at the things that would have been bothering her insistently for the last half year.

He fervently hoped that the knowledge, when Hermione inevitably got her hands on it one way or another, would not drive her to insanity as it had done to so many others. Harry’d called it deadly, but that wasn’t strictly true—and yet it fit, if only because it always led to a mercy-kill at some point.

Making the decision to supply Hermione’s thirst for information had been made much harder than necessary because of the darned Hallows of Death continuously trying to get their way. All three of them had made themselves known multiple times during the discussion, clamouring to be heard and listened to without bothering to take the circumstances into account, let alone Harry’s personal feelings on the matter. The three annoying items hadn’t even seemed to have the decency to wait for their turn; all the time they had been constantly trying to push each other away in order to be the first in line to nag.

Honestly, Harry felt like he’d sat between three Hermiones—at her very worst—having a shouting match with each other, all the while being pulled this way and that because they all wanted him to take _their_ side against the others.

It _really_ hadn’t helped his splitting headache any, and it was high time he did something about the trio of annoyances, but Harry didn’t manage to start right away. He tried—oh how he _tried_ —to find a good moment to leave the castle as soon as he could, but right when he needed it most, free time suddenly became very scarce because the DA overflowed with new members joining in a massive wave that lasted two full weeks.

In an act of pure frustration, Harry eventually just went to track down Ron with all the ferocity of a predator out on a hunt—one that had been starved for a long time far beyond what was healthy—to tell the redhead that Harry desperately needed some peace _right now_ , and everybody was to not go looking for him for _at least_ two days.

On his way out Harry barely thought to inform Hermione on the matter as well, but at least he would find her somewhere that he knew would be quiet, even if it would not actually let him rest—at this point anything was better than nothing.

When Harry got to sneak out of Hogwarts it was just after nightfall, and he returned only when was almost sunrise, making for a very long night of work—which, in Harry’s humble opinion, had been totally worth it.

The bonds with the artefacts no longer felt like they seared across his mind, continuously rubbing his brain raw—now they felt like cool water gently flowing through him which softened the pain of having had to deal with unsuitable Hallows for much too long.

He spent the next day hidden away somewhere in the castle, doing nothing but letting the new Hallows soothe the wounds (emotional, mental and magical) that were scattered all over his psyche, luxuriating in the bonds that _should have been like that_ from the very start.

As a result, Harry was remarkably more rested and relaxed when Hermione and Ron came looking for him with ideas and plans for their next move in the Horcrux hunt.

Apparently, Hermione had had a visitor in the form of one certain the headmaster when Harry was out, and the aged wizard had given her a well-worn runic book that contained a collection of popular wizarding stories, hinting, hinting and _hinting_ (nearly endlessly) that it should, would, help them further.

The three students spent a few moments commiserating amongst themselves over the headaches the damned old coot could easily prevent by stopping his routine of obfuscation and misdirection. But then they simply stopped groaning from one second to the next, because the Gryffindors didn’t have the energy to spend on it any more than they had the time to sit and do nothing when there was work to do.

A symbol doodled in the margin of a specific page amongst other hand-written notes caught Harry’s attention when Hermione showed the males what the book held page by single page. He knew almost instantly what the symbol was, what it must be representing, given that it was drawn on the very first page of ‘The Tale of the Three Brothers’—a story that he definitely _did_ recognise—and clearly serving as the big clue Dumbledore meant to lead them to realising what Voldemort planned to do in addition to having his horcruxes secure immortality.

Given that Harry had already surmised Voldemort’s quest for the Elder Wand a long time ago, perhaps he shouldn’t think of the entire route Dumbledore had set up as being unnecessarily long-winded and complicated for such a simple thing lying in wait at the end—but he did.

Ron urged them into action, saying that they had been standing still long enough—Harry had a feeling that his friend meant it as much literally as he did metaphorically—which led to the Trio packing up and going in short order, despite it being only scant hours before Christmas Eve.

Not that there was much to miss, seeing as there simply was no time or much in the way of resources to organise anything approaching a proper Hogwarts Christmas—people had tried, and had succeeded in setting up for a small very modest party, but there was little else that could be done.

Hermione and Ron had apparently already had a round of discussion on what place to visit, as they immediately told Harry they would be going to a village by the name of Godric’s Hollow, which was apparently where Harry’d lived for that first year of his life that he barely had memories of.

They were primarily there to visit one Bathilda Bagshot, the author of their history textbook A History of Magic, and a witch old enough that she’d already been an adult when Dumbledore had been but a child.

Harry had no idea why Hermione insisted on going to see her, or why Ron backed her up, but he was getting a bad feeling about it that grew worse the more distance they covered from the apparition point to the village.

Thankfully, a few more stops had been planned in before approaching the extremely elderly witch—a hidden statue of the Potter family masquerading as an obelisk for the muggles, the ruins of the home where Harry’s broken cradle most probably still stood, and finally the grave of Harry’s parents.

As he stood before the white marble stone that marked where his parents lay buried a memory welled up from the depths of his mind—a memory of both his parents, with clasped hands, standing before the other Him as a pair of very young children. It warmed his heart to know that they went together through the doors leading beyond even as it also made him ache with longing and loneliness.

Sirius’ moment surfaced too, and the late lord Black was smiling, hyperactive, relieved to find himself there after having drifted in a void of nothingness for so long. Tellingly, the man had been a young adult, the age he’d been around the time when that fateful Halloween tore his world apart.

In the meantime, Hermione had conjured a wreath of flowers, Christmas roses at Ron’s whispered directive, and now gently put it in Harry’s hands. Green eyes stared numbly at the fragile white flowers in his hands before their owner remembered where they ought to go and went to set them down at the base of the grave with great care.

Harry spared no thought for the ridiculous epitaph written underneath the names, did at most think that Dumbledore for one so wise did know so little if _that_ was the best he could think of to put onto the marble stone.

_‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.’_

As if Death is an enemy to be defeated instead of a natural part of life.

Ron silently touched Harry’s shoulder and motioned that he and Hermione would be wandering around the graveyard to give Harry the time he needed in front of his parents’ grave. The young hero felt pathetically grateful for their consideration and gave a thankful nod in their direction before he turned back to the grave.

When he eventually went to find them, Harry found his friends standing in front of another grave. It was extremely old, battered by centuries of weather and the name was barely readable, but he heard Hermione say she thought it read ‘Ignotus Peverell’. The detail that had drawn their attention though was the presence of the same symbol that had been in Harry’s thoughts since seeing it in the book.

“Harry,” Ron said as soon as the taller teen noticed the other boy’s approach. “Didn’t Luna’s dad wear a pendant of this at the wedding?”

Harry needed a moment to find his footing back because he’d actually _forgotten_ that titbit of information until now, and the realisation left him reeling. With how many things he knew that he wasn’t supposed to know, Harry now tended to lose sight of the details he either logically would know or was expected to know—he hadn’t yet found a way to properly compensate for it all.

“It’s also in the book,” he heard Hermione say to Ron, accompanied by the rustle of pages as she was undoubtedly in the process of showing on which page the symbol was drawn.

“Victor told me it was Grindelwald’s symbol,” Harry offered then, remembering the conversation he’d had with the Bulgarian at the wedding. “He even fought with Mr. Lovegood over it, thinking that wearing it meant that he is a follower of Grindelwald. I’m not sure about that, though—Luna’s dad doesn’t seem the type to be a Dark Lord’s follower.”

“Then let’s go find Mr. Lovegood after we’ve seen Bathilda Bagshot,” Hermione replied, already having set off in the direction of the kissing gate through which they’d entered the graveyard.

“Let’s not.”

Startled, both of his friends stopped walking to stare at Harry in reaction to his flat yet vehement tone. The dark-haired Gryffindor met first Ron, then Hermione’s gaze and stated: “I’ve got an extremely bad feeling about meeting that woman.”

That produced immediate reaction in both other Gryffindors; Ron’s face rapidly paled and his stance became wary, while ‘Mione frowned and gave Harry a piercing look.

“Are you sure?” Ron asked, looking as if he expected something to jump from behind the gravestones to attack in the next minute.

“Yes, I’ve been feeling it since we came here and it’s only getting worse. Whatever it is, we shouldn’t linger here any longer—let’s just _go_.”

Thankfully, both of his friends knew better by now than to ignore Harry’s warnings, especially when they were so clear for once—and all three students disapparated from the graveyard the very next second.

Xenophilius Lovegood was very helpful and told the Trio not only about the three brothers, but spoke also of the legend of the Deathly Hallows and the Master of Death. Harry could have kissed the man—Luna’s just-as-whacky dad had just given him the perfect opening to later tell of the wand in his possession without making either of his friends suspicious.

So, as soon as they had left the Lovegood home Harry directed them to Grimmauld Place, where he proceeded to take out the Elder Wand and told them of the events surrounding it ending up in his hands—including the conversation he’d had with Dumbledore at end of last school year.

“Blimey,” Ron exclaimed, “you’ve got what You-Know-Who wants right here.”

There had been no words needed for the three students to reach that conclusion independently.

“I think I may have one more…” Harry murmured as he pulled his invisibility cloak out. “Remember that Dumbledore had my cloak the night my parents died? Even though he doesn’t need it at all to be invisible?”

There was no need to say anything further, for Hermione pounced on the cloak, her face filled with the expression that meant her thoughts were running, colliding and connecting at high speed behind her eyes.

“Merlin’s dirty underwear,” Ron swore. “Way to give us a heart attack, mate. What’s next, you happen to have the Resurrection Stone on you too?”

“Actually…”

Harry hesitated, just a beat, before he decided to simply take the opportunity and stop worrying about the consequences.

“—I think I may have it right here.” And he held up the ring in front of Ron’s incredulous face.

“Morgana’s sagging tits! Merlin’s shaggy—ow! What the hell, Harry? How’d you get _that_ one?”

“Fawkes gave it to me…” Harry answered somewhat hesitantly, amused despite himself at the way Hermione had smacked Ron with a free hand even as she had been completely absorbed in examining the cloak and how Ron hadn’t even let himself be distracted by the hit.

“He was very insistent. I thought it was better to just go along with it and ask the headmaster about it later. But then all sorts of things started happening…” The identical looks on both Hermione and Ron’s faces spoke of knowing it was his magical heritage he was referring to. “And I never got around to it.”

“Doesn’t that mean you got them all from Dumbledore?” asked Ron suddenly. He held up his fingers one by one as he spoke. “In first year he gave you the cloak, last year you won the wand from him via a Death Eater and Fawkes gave you the stone, probably on his behalf. Doesn’t that mean he was the Master of Death?”

Hermione interrupted at that point. “I don’t think so. The headmaster didn’t own all three at the same time. Harry’s had the cloak for years now and the stone only surfaced last year.” Her expression became shrewd then, and she scrutinised Harry closely.

“Harry,” she said then, with the tone of voice that could cut through anything. “When again did you say you saw the ring for the first time?”

“Dumbledore wore the ring when he picked me up at the Dursleys’ that summer, but I couldn’t get a proper look back then. I saw it much more clearly during that first meeting with him, at the beginning of the school year.”

Hermione’s look sharpened some more. “And when did your inheritance start to manifest?”

“…About a month after that meeting.”

“When did you get the ring?”

“That was on Ron’s birthday. You know, that day he got poisoned and I had to run up to Dumbledore’s office to get the professor to the infirmary.”

“So, five months later. Okay, last question: when did you get the wand?”

“At the end of the school year, during that battle—I won it off the attacker that disarmed the headmaster. Anything else that you want to check, ‘Mione?” A bit of sarcasm had slipped into his voice by the time Harry spoke the last few words.

The female Gryffindor shook her head at that. “No, that’s all.”

“Can you tell me what you are doing here, ‘Mione?” Ron asked at that point. He was clearly bewildered by the exchange and had spent the entire duration of it shifting his gaze back and forth between his two friends the way one would follow a muggle tennis match.

“Just checking a theory.”

“What theory?”

“Ron,” she sighed, “Think. Harry has all three Hallows here, so he must be the Master of Death. But we don’t know anything about what having that title _does_. It could come with power, or do nothing at all. But we also know that in that same period of time he collected the last two artefacts he suddenly began to display symptoms of awakening some latent magical heritage that I could find _absolutely no history of on either side of his family_. Doesn’t that strike you as a very _peculiar_ coincidence?”

A startled blink.

“Bloody hell.”

“Quite.” Hermione smiled as she said so.

The theories began being tossed around back and forth between the Trio’s resident researcher and strategist, while the leader-tactician looked on with a warm half-smile, preferring to keep out of the others’ way for the time being.

The vision came without warning, but for once there was neither pain nor discomfort.

_Dust. A pair of eyes lose their light. Red streaks of blood turn everything in a haze of red alongside the black. Whispers of something either coming or leaving. A vague green flash, a bottomless void, sliver flowing lines in a branching pattern._

_Sounds. Someone struggling to breathe. Words spoken, disjoined and jumbled._

_“… back…” “Are you… your… another…” “… I am… we… same face… Aspects of Death.”_

By the time agelessly vibrant electric green eyes reopened, the end was already known.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, at this point these roles have been mentioned: two Personifications of Death, Aspects of Death, a God of Death, an Avatar of Death and a long line of Masters of Death (both fake and real).
> 
> Also, Hermione got her turn and I had to let Draco speak again for the sake of the plot. Instead of a third and/or fourth character hijacking the storytelling we've gotten more insight into the workings of gods.


	4. Third step – Progress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which some sneaking is done and events move ever forwards._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go, another chapter of Marks done. It's somewhat shorter this time, but still has plenty of things to tell, including a few hints on where Avatars of Death are from.
> 
> Also, I forgot to say this last time, but bonus points to anyone who can figure out what Harry had a vision of at the end of the previous chapter.
> 
> Enjoy.

Malfoy Manor, in Harry’s opinion, greatly resembled its inhabitants, the family it was named after. It was posh, gleaming whiteness on the outside and it appeared to be luxurious, decadent yet welcoming in the parts where visitors were usually received, but things were not nearly so beautiful any longer in the rest of the rooms.

Destruction had left its marks everywhere to varying degrees. In some parts there was hardly anything left that could even remotely be called ‘intact’, while in others the majority of the interior was either fixed or was somehow spared the ruination in the first place, yet still bore some sort of ambiance of imminent ruin.

Despite the fact that Harry was most decidedly _not_ invited by Voldemort to come visit, he didn’t encounter any of the Dead Eater guards undoubtedly going about their rounds that very moment. It was a consequence of being let in and led around by a member of the Malfoy family, even if the man in question was already deceased.

Harry was glad he’d had the foresight to call Dobby at Hogwarts to let the elf know he’d be going to Malfoy Manor that night. At least this way he didn’t have to worry about the crazy little thing doing something rash because he thought Harry was in danger.

Sometimes he forgot how perceptive Dobby could be underneath all the crazy, which was why Harry had been quite surprised when the elf had told him “Dobby always be knowing that yous being a very special wizard, Mr. Harry Potter sir!” before popping away once more.

The Hallow-wielding wizard turned back to the ethereal Envoy standing at attention to the side. Upon being noticed, the former lord begun moving again with the calm, sure steps of one traveling through home territory.

For once, Harry had opted to interact with Abraxas wholly as himself, the mortal side of Death. While drawing on the bond held no risk of causing negative effects to his mental health, it did come with drawbacks of sorts to balance out the gains. He had no desire to call attention to his presence in the manor and preferably wished not to be found out at all on this visit.

Abraxas lead Harry to a blank stretch of wall where a hidden passage opened when the right rhythm was tapped on a specific stone. They needed two more of these secret walkways before finally arriving at what currently functioned as the dungeons of the manor.

The soul remained behind in the empty drawing room—where the entrance to the single makeshift holding cell was located—to stand guard, while Harry entered the cellar currently acting as a cell, knowing who occupied it at the moment. Pale silver eyes sharpened with intelligence met the youth’s in silent appraisal and passed an unspoken greeting from one old in age to one ancient in mind.

“Greetings, oh Eternal One,” said Garrick Ollivander from where he was sat on the floor. “I was hoping you would pay me a visit one of these days.”

“Hello, mister Ollivander,” Harry answered with a friendly smile, not at all surprised by the old man’s knowledge of his nature. Wand-making was an art that required a certain sensitivity to magic—without it the results would frequently suffer from incompatible or unbalanced combinations of materials—and Ollivander was said to be the very best in Britain, so _of course_ the man would have sensed Harry’s slumbering potential when they first met.

Now that he thought back to that meeting in the shop, Harry realised that the wand-maker had probably meant to allude to that when he spoke the words: ‘ _I think we must expect great things from you, Mr Potter...’_

The Hallows Harry was wearing, on full display, were as clear an indication as anything else that Harry had by now come into his heritage as the Master of Death, so there was no surprise on that aspect either.

The old man stood when Harry reached him, seemingly not wanting to speak from the floor with his visitor, and possibly also wishing to avoid showing disrespect. Harry took it all in stride and merely motioned the wandmaker to follow as he turned around and began walking back to the exit.

Ollivander obliged and came up to walk beside the student, even as the man’s slow, careful gait showed how much pain he was in. They were let out by Abraxas—whom Ollivander politely nodded to in thanks—and made their way out the drawing room in complete silence, the spectre a pale shadow on their heels.

“If I may ask, Mr. Potter,” Ollivander began at last while they travelled through some hallway. Harry turned his head to the side where he was met by an intense silver gaze that distracted his thoughts for a fraction of a second—then he nodded.

“Why were you born in this age, Old One? Is it, perchance, due to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?”

A part of Harry was surprised at the question, but another wasn’t. That the old man would know of the purpose of Death’s Avatars was a complete surprise, true, but then again, Mr. Ollivander seemed to know of many things that he shouldn’t.

“I am not just a mere wandmaker—I am also a shaman,” smiled said wandmaker in response to Harry’s involuntary questioning glance.

Yes, that cleared a lot of things up. A shaman would know of Harry’s arrival, of the fate he was born to every time, and the stakes that were part and parcel of the whole mess.

There was, after all, a reason that Death’s Avatars weren’t supposed to exist—yet did. It was why Harry’s birth being the subject of a prophecy was, as the muggles say, par for the course. And why Harry needed to hurry, now that he was ‘awake’.

Other deities tended to be rarely without Avatars in the mortal world, and even when they all died it would not take long before new ones were born. They came in singles, twos or threes and sometimes even more, always plentiful or at least ubiquitous for those in the know no matter which force they represented.

Death, however, was different.

The birth of an Avatar of Death was an extremely rare event in comparison, occurring perhaps once or twice every millennium—and came always as a single individual, not part of a group.

In addition, there was no set time between the appearance of one Avatar and the next—there could easily not be one for several millennia, only for two or three to be born right after one another within the next thousand years.

An Avatar of Death’s birth had to be triggered by something that made their presence necessary, and it was this that Ollivander was actually asking for—what the trigger was that had ultimately led to Harry’s birth as Death’s Avatar.

“No,” Harry told the wandmaker-shaman at his side. “He is but the latest player of this unfortunate performance that I must put a stop to.”

“I see.”

No more words were needed after that, having said perhaps not everything, but enough that the rest could be inferred as it was with the information that had been given.

However, there was still information Harry needed, so he begun the conversation anew. Luckily, the wandmaker knew what the Gryffindor would need and was able to provide enough bits and pieces that he’d overheard during his captivity with which Harry could complete the picture.

“Here I must bid you goodbye for now, Ancient One,” Ollivander murmured with a low bow and clasped hands. At this point, they had reached the apparition room from where the shaman could apparate out of the manor. Harry would not be following because he planned to take a different route out.

“Fare thee well, Mr. Potter, and I thank you for your assistance.” And gone was the old man, the shaman, the moment the words had been spoken.

Harry turned around and returned to the manor proper, this time wandering as if taking a stroll. And in a way he was—just not for fun.

At least one horcrux, the diary, had been in this place for a long time, and Harry wanted to make sure that there were no others any of the Malfoys had squirreled away on Voldemort’s orders. He held little hope of that being true—Tom Riddle was anything but stupid, after all, current state of total insanity notwithstanding—but it couldn’t hurt to check while he was there anyway.

As predicted, no more horcruxes resided at Malfoy Manor, or at least none that Harry could sense anyway. The Gryffindor was nevertheless very sure that he would have noticed if there was one no matter what protections it would be under, as evidenced by how he had clearly picked up on the traces of black magic coming from the heavily warded place where the diary had once been kept.

Harry had Abraxas lead him to where the gardens were, as there was an admittedly small chance that Tom would have resorted to burying things there. It was much easier to scan outside, even with how much larger the area was that he had to check, because there was much less interference of objects and beings with magic that muddled his senses.

That was why Harry knew within minutes of stepping outside that there was nothing of interest hidden in the entirety of the gardens.

But there happened to be _someone_ of interest waiting for him just off the paved path instead.

Narcissa Malfoy née Black couldn’t help clenching and unclenching her hands in nervosity as she waited, sitting on the white stone bench underneath the old oak. The tree stood quite a distance to the side of the gardens, near a sidewall of the manor that bore no windows at all. She fervently hoped that the Dark Lord would never hear of neither her presence there, nor of what purpose made her do so.

Soft footsteps had her look up, half in the fear she refused to show but still felt, half in the hope that the great risk she had taken by being there would prove not to be in vain. The first thing she saw was the approaching half-familiar figure of her father-in-law, still as utterly silent and blank-faced as he had been every time Narcissa had seen him since his return from beyond the Veil.

The man the lady Malfoy remembered had been quite different from the shade he was now. He had been proud, headstrong, and—even while weakened with sickness in the last period of his existence in the mortal world—full of _life_. Death made her husband’s father look brittle… ethereal, if that was the right word. Narcissa was convinced he had scared a lot of years off her life the first time she’d come face-to-face with this family member who’d long been dead.

On the heels of the translucent man was the one she’d been waiting for, the Master of the Envoys and Lord of the dead—Harry James Potter. Her only son had managed to pass on the knowledge he’d foolishly risked life and sanity to obtain so that Narcissa may know how to treat her child’s classmate when negotiating with the Avatar of Death. She would not let it go to waste.

In a single deliberate move, the Malfoy matriarch stood up from the bench to kneel before the Living Embodiment of Death approaching her, in the characteristic pose that in certain circles had come to be known as the ‘God-Greeter’. As Narcissa waited for the Godling to address her, the view of the earth underneath her, which she was forced to look at for the time being, made her think of how fortunate it had proved to be that she had taken the time to plant the knowledge of the Ancient Gods firmly into Draco’s mind.

“Who are you waiting for?” was a question she decidedly did not expect as a greeting. It signified that it was not the God that was speaking to her at this time—for any Deity would _never_ deign to use such casual words nor act in the manner in which they were spoken—but the Avatar whom housed Its might.

Narcissa didn’t allow the silence to linger for long. “I wait for you, my Lord,” were her words, as she lifted her head in proud deference, the deference she felt she owed to the one whom had provided her family with protection. A tiny muscle pulled in the Avatar’s face at the address, but there was no reaction otherwise.

“Am I?” the young man asked calmly, his head tilted slightly in question. “I was under the impression that you already had one—someone who isn’t me.”

This was where the hard part began—Narcissa fully expected that she would have to fight for every inch of regard, for each and every bit of favour this _Being_ would deign to offer.

“He might have once been,” she said next, weighing the words carefully before they left her mouth. “But I don’t take kindly to those that endanger my family the way He has been.”

“So you switch allegiances, just like that? You would tie your fate to the first alternative that comes along?”

He was testing her, Narcissa knew, and she had expected nothing less from a Deity at least as old as time itself. Fortunately, she had long since thought out both what she would offer and what she would ask for if ever Narcissa managed to have an audience with the Avatar of Death.

“I wouldn’t and I won’t. There is no need for the full might of a God. I ask for something much simpler.”

Something in her phrasing seemed to have caught the young wizard’s attention at that point, though Narcissa couldn’t precisely put her finger on what part gave it away. Nevertheless, the lady Malfoy was quite certain of the conclusion she’d come to, and an unnamed weight fell off her shoulders to bring relief Narcissa hadn’t felt in a long time. A small, soft breath of air that could neither truly be called a huff nor a sigh escaped without her permission, and a small near-unnoticeable crinkle on her forehead eased with it.

“Oh? And what are you going to ask your fellow mortal?” asked the young Potter heir with an undertone of amusement.

All the minute traces of divinity that had been present so far had left the teenage Gryffindor’s bearing completely at this point. She was now speaking only to the human the wizarding world thought him to be and so it was safe to sit up to look him in the eye.

“Please—kill Him. End this war, once and for all, so that I can sleep easily knowing that my family is safe.”

“Killing Tom Riddle won’t automatically mean peace or safety,” the teen before her intoned with a calm voice and wisdom that Narcissa hadn’t expected from one of his age, despite knowing better than to measure him with the same system as everybody else. “It will bring the collapse of the Dark line-up, but nothing more.”

“As long as that Man is gone, I can ensure the safety of my family by myself. The other members of the Dark are no threat and those that can be truly dangerous will not be enough so that I shall be unable to neutralise them when needed.”

Her words were no bluff at all, for Narcissa Malfoy was also a Black, and all knew better than to presume that they could handle her wrath. The Light might not know, but the Dark was well aware that she was, as they say, the power behind the throne of the Malfoy family.

Whether the Potter heir knew it too or had no idea, he still smiled a knowing smile that spoke of plans to lean back and watch with enjoyment when the fallout took place. Only Narcissa’s life-long social training prevented her from returning the smile with one of her own to proclaim her status as the most superior actor on the stage.

She couldn’t consider this exchange done just yet.

“If I may, I believe to have a way to assist in His demise,” Narcissa murmured with care, swallowing heavily through the unexpected lump in her throat. “My… elder sister” _in truth my eldest sister, for I still have, yet lost, another one_ “was once given an artefact in her care, same as with my husband. When the one Lucius had was lost, the punishment for that was much more severe than one would expect.” There, she once more met the deep green gaze head-on.

She dared him to deny the importance of these cursed artefacts, dared him to tell her that she was wrong in her reasoning—but he didn’t. By expression alone young Mr. Potter wordlessly told her that Narcissa was right, that the destruction of these items was part of the steps leading to the downfall of the Dark Lord.

“I can obtain Bella’s from her vault,” she said quickly, giving the boy before her no chance to speak first. “If I do so, will you handle the rest?”

The immediate affirmation loosened the iron clamps over her heart and left her boneless with their subsequent removal. Her family would be safe, the Dark Lord was going down—Narcissa had no doubt of either.

Between the terrifying Lord of the Dark and the prophesized child whom also wore the role of Death, only a fool would think that the God would lose.

She would closely watch this Being in the guise of a teen, Narcissa decided—as closely as he would let her. As terrible as the Dark Lord was, she had no doubt that Death could be infinitely more horrifying should some fool of a mortal truly anger the God—and the lady Malfoy did _not_ wish to become one of them, by accident or otherwise.

Not long after, when the Avatar had left the garden with footsteps as silent as the spirit that had accompanied him, Narcissa finally stood up from her kneeling position, feeling all of her years even though she wasn’t _that_ old yet. Her ghostly father-in-law watched in silence as the lady Malfoy went to sit back on the bench coloured as pale as her hair.

Despite the chill currently permeating her body and the shivers she couldn’t seem to stop, Narcissa felt rather satisfied with the end result. She would have her wish, if only because it coincided with the plans of the Avatar, and would only have to provide assistance she could easily do. Even the matter of her allegiance, which had largely remained unspoken during the conversation, now essentially belonging to the Avatar of the God of Death had had few consequences and none she considered too high a price to pay.

“What do you think, father?” Narcissa asked aloud, almost on a whim. “How did I do in all this?” She motioned at the garden around her, but in meaning indicated her life in its entirety. _Have I done well in asking the human instead of the God? Have I done all that I can in looking after my husband and child? Have I made the right decision to abandon both of my sisters?_

The soul of Abraxas Malfoy took one slow look at her and then dropped his head as if he meant to nod and then forgot to lift it back up. Seconds later, his figure began blurring away into nothing until he was completely gone, leaving Narcissa in solitude on the marble bench.

“Thank you, father, for the company.” A _nd for the support._

Barely a week after Harry’s visit to Malfoy Manor, Mrs. Malfoy had her father-in-law deliver the famed cup of Hufflepuff. He wasn’t quite certain how exactly she had gone about obtaining the horcrux from the vault of her sister, but he suspected that the witch sometimes visited Gringotts on behalf of Bellatrix and had just retrieved the cup alongside everything else. Especially with the enchanted pendant he’d given her for identifying the soul container and stripping it of its protections, it would have been an extremely easy job to pick it up and just walk right out.

Extracting the fragmented shards of Riddle’s spirit from the cup went just about the same as dealing with the locket had been, with the big exception that Harry was all by himself in the ritual chamber and therefore didn’t need to be quick or sneaky about what he was doing. The vile thing had struggled all the way, but the freedom of movement Harry had for dealing with this one meant that he could afford to be efficient—instead of mainly discreet—about the whole process.

The fact that Harry had managed to obtain this particular horcrux without input or assistance from anyone else meant that he was also free to choose the moment and manner of informing his friends about the matter. In the end Harry decided to just keep it simple, thus he went up to Ron and ‘Mione and held up the ruined copy of the horcrux with a shrug.

“One more down.”

By their calculations Voldemort was down to the last inanimate horcrux (probably another of the Founders’ relics), Nagini and the man himself. Harry had dealt with the diary in second year, Dumbledore had gotten to the stone and with both the locket and cup now handled they should be well past midway to the goal.

Still, something kept niggling at Harry’s mind about the whole thing, as if to tell him that there was more to it that they couldn’t yet see. He resolved to look into it later, but had to put it aside for now.

Going by the simple logic of elimination—Gryffindor’s sword, Hufflepuff’s cup, Slytherin’s locket—the Trio theorised that the last horcrux would likely be an artefact of Ravenclaw’s. Several rounds of gathering information amongst the castle’s inhabitants had them conclude that only that particular Founder’s diadem was a viable option as being a vessel of Riddle’s soul, since Voldemort would not have chosen anything less known or of less importance than that lost object.

The trail of clues led then to the Grey Lady, the ghost of Ravenclaw, from whom they managed to get the tragic story of the deaths of her and the Bloody Baron that ended with her mother’s diadem lost somewhere in Albania. Tom Riddle had most certainly charmed the story out of her too, which meant that he would most definitely have found the artefact at some point—the _when_ was unimportant in comparison to the near-certainty of the recovery. The then-young Voldemort would have brought it back to Hogwarts at some point to hide it in the castle—Harry was absolutely sure of that, could sympathise with every bit of feeling and thought of that unending longing for _home_ that would never be completely sated—which had likely been when he had visited Dumbledore to apply for the position of DADA professor.

This knowledge, however, still did not bring them much closer to finding the diadem.

Again they split up to chase any leads they could find, in the hope that by going alone—and therefore eliminating the need to wait for the others when moving from place to place—each of the Trio wouldn’t be held back when chasing leads and could immediately investigate whatever thought came up.

Hermione gave Harry a pensive look just before they went their own ways with the promise to meet up at every mealtime in the great hall. He wasn’t surprised by that in the least, as she had by now read enough material to at least wonder about how the world of Deities related to her classmate’s magical heritage. Right about now the clever witch would probably be questioning whether Harry was truly human at all, or if he was of mixed blood instead.

Still, there was no time—was there ever?—for that discussion to be held now, which was most likely the only reason that Hermione hadn’t wrung Harry out for answers yet. With a bit of luck his ominous warnings were also giving her pause and it would lead to not being choked to within an inch of his life for information anytime soon.

Even with no time limit of sorts applied to their task, there was a sense of urgency haunting each of the Trio’s steps, although the sooner it was done the better. Luna and Neville both somehow got wind of the castle-wide search and Harry didn’t have the heart to send them away when they insisted on accompanying him at for least some of the time, switching between him, Ron and Hermione with no particular order.

Harry visited the Ravenclaw common room first, accompanied by his two determined assistants. They found no clues though the two Gryffindors took their time looking around to satisfy their curiosity. This common room too housed an influx of refugees for whom room had been made, thus it looked much more chaotic and full than it normally would have been— _claustrophobic_ was Harry’s first thought, closely followed by a shiver that he was barely able to suppress.

The next stop was a new round of inquiries amongst Hogwarts’ ghosts, including—to Neville’s dismay—Peeves, whom Harry was able to control to a certain degree even if the poltergeist wasn’t technically a ghost and hadn’t ever been alive. He and others of his ilk resembled the dead just enough that the God of Death could bind them, force them to submit to the will of t **h** e **i** r **s** to a degree. It also helped tremendously that Harry’s role was not limited to Death, but also included Destruction, End and Change.

Moaning Myrtle was last because Harry had trouble finding her, and she happily took him on a whirlwind of a round trip all around the castle to many hidden spots that could possibly house the horcrux. As expected, none of them proved to conceal the elusive diadem, but by the end of it Harry had had a lot of fun so he considered it time well-spent.

At this point Luna and Neville moved on to find the next of the Trio to accompany and the teenage celebrity moved on to visit with a few friends he hadn’t had much time to see lately.

Hagrid had recently returned to Hogwarts, though he’d been forced to take refuge in the castle rather than live in his house on the grounds. The half-giant was perpetually looking grim but determined instead of his usual jolly cheerfulness and Harry was forced to admit that seeing the fierce expression truly—finally—drove home the fearsome strength of the man’s giant heritage, which was something that the student hadn’t precisely been unaware of but hadn’t fully realised until now due to the groundskeeper’s gentle personality.

Still, for all that Hagrid was itching to fight he wasn’t any less gentle with Harry physically or emotionally, which led to the young Gryffindor feeling no worries at all for his own health—he subsequently left Hagrid with a much lighter, peaceful mind.

The next destination was Hogwarts’ kitchens, where Harry went to see Dobby and Winky to catch up with. He took care not to forget to thank the former Malfoy elf for the information given before the excursion into Malfoy Manor. Seeing Winky in a thoroughly inebriated state (whether it was _again_ or _still_ , he didn’t know) made Harry think of Kreacher back at Grimmauld Place, and how much better the old elf was looking lately.

Hermione was still rapidly going through the books Kreacher kept bringing to her and then taking back to their hidden shelves in the ancestral Black family library, and each time the elf did another exchange he looked both happier to be doing something useful and more incredulous at the behaviour of the muggle-born girl. Harry had also been making a point to spend more time in Kreacher’s presence in order to ease him into getting used to having the Avatar of Death as master, measures which appeared to be doing the job beautifully as far as the wizard could tell.

When Harry left the kitchens, fully loaded with food as was usual, he was soon met by a restless Hedwig. The snowy owl began circling her human ever more agitatedly, never touching down to land. Harry thought she might be aware of the threat looming over Hogwarts but could not be sure of her reasons for coming to see him with such haste.

Hedwig waited impatiently until the student had emptied his hands of the load he carried before she landed on his shoulder with a great deal more noise and unnecessary movements than usual. Stroking her feathers seemed to do little to quell her unrest, but Harry kept going at it regardless. He was reminded of the idle thoughts he’d had lately of making her a Guide, allowing her the power to cross the boundaries between worlds. She had the right temperament, and more than plenty of intelligence to use the abilities it would gain her, not to mention that it would enable her to keep Harry company for much longer than her natural lifespan allowed.

He had yet to come to a decision and thus allowed the strands of thought to drift away again, to be picked up at another time.

Fawkes was the next being he came across, the phoenix meeting him with a lot more calm than the owl. As promised, Harry gave him a good petting, same as he was doing for Hedwig. It was a bit awkward, caressing the feathers of two good-sized birds sitting on his shoulders, but he managed and they seemed happy enough with the attention given.

“What can I do for you, Fawkes?” Harry asked the fiery bird, mindful of the precarious positions of both passengers.

The phoenix chirped happily and tweeted a few times. Harry chuckled warmly at the reaction, “Just checking up on me, huh?”

Hedwig hooted at Fawkes from her seat on his other shoulder, now a bit more settled and not nearly as anxious as earlier. Today seemed to be the day of rekindling avian friendships and enjoying each other’s companionship—Harry didn’t mind.

Both birds stayed with him for the rest of the day, sometimes flying ahead or around him, but most of the time hitching a ride in comfort with the Wizard Express. The human appreciated the company and took advantage of the opportunity to soak up the simple joys of the easy interaction.

A phoenix would die innumerable times over the course of its lifetime—and each time it would see Death. Harry was therefore not at all surprised that Fawkes had recognised him even before the Hallows’ return to his hands. Similarly, the apparent student now knew of this near-immortal bird more than anyone in existence because the dead were treated the same no matter how temporarily the state: all that the being was or knew or had experienced belonged to Death from the moment the soul entered the Hallowed Halls where t **he** y resided.

Fawkes, like all others of his kind, had come and gone so many times that he had picked up certain knowledge that no other type of living being could boast, and he was also one of the very few alive who’d seen both faces of t **h** e **i** r **s**.

That was mostly why, at the end of the day, when Fawkes suddenly launched himself from Harry’s shoulder to fly ahead with a loud squawk, Harry didn’t waste time in following the streak of living fire. He ran through the nearly empty hallways lighted only by the dim light of the late evening coming through the occasional window—spurred on by the memories of the soul inside the diadem arriving Beyond that had begun filtering through the haze of his thoughts.

Up the stairs, down many others, gasping for breath as he went, the Avatar of Death ran and ran after the phoenix without pause. Hedwig flew overhead, a white streak against the dark stone and wood of the ceilings. Harry did not dare to stop and risk losing his momentum, not even when black spots appeared in the corner of his vision and his sides began to burn. He did not even care that they seemed to be going in circles, focused as he was on stretching his senses to the limits of his current abilities.

Then, in a flash, something caught the teenager’s eye. When he was led through one of Hogwarts’ several courtyards he spotted a broken gargoyle lying on the ground that had evidently become collateral damage during the pandemonium at the end of the last school year. Many more of such damaged areas remained in the castle because the effort of repairing them couldn’t be spared at the moment.

The gargoyle itself was nothing special; just one of the many that could be found on the roofs and the outer walls of Hogwarts, acting as the numerous guardians of the courtyards. It was made of grey stone and the smashed pieces were strew all across the cobblestones amidst a lot of other debris, but the head was still intact enough to be recognised.

Something in the empty stare of the statue triggers memories of other things in Harry, until—finally—the knut dropped. A different statue with a peculiar wig and headdress in a certain hidden room would be his destination—and Harry wasted no time in going there to rid the world of yet another part of Tom Marvolo Riddle.

 


	5. Fourth step – Infinite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which certain people look into the abyss but have yet to make the plunge._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This time's chapter is a shorter one, but it felt more natural to cut it off where I did. Sorry to end with a massive cliffhanger like this, but there's a very important part of the plot coming up, so you all can at least look forward to that.  
> Also, I think it's somehow very appropriate that Halloween is coming up... Happy reading.

The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets had not changed a bit, in Ron Weasley’s opinion. It was still accessible from the same snake-marked sink in that haunted girls’ bathroom, with the same slimy pipe leading down to the tunnel that had collapsed in the middle during second year.

There were also differences. The whiny ghost girl was out floating around somewhere and Harry was similarly somewhere else in his own search for the next of Tom Riddle’s cursed bits. Hermione was here instead, insisting on accompanying Ron to the Chamber as soon as she got wind of Ron’s plans via Luna and Neville.

Mimicking Harry’s command in parseltongue to open the entrance took a couple of tries but it ultimately proved to be possible for a non-speaker—it was just very difficult. Ron was still basking in the afterglow of his success, a warm feeling of satisfaction curling in his stomach, even when he slid down the big pipe and had to walk through the dark, possibly spider-infested tunnel, past the collapsed point and to the door covered in snake designs.

It was a good thing that all parsel-related things they’d encountered so far had been very unoriginal with their passwords. Slytherin must’ve felt so secure with being the only parselmouth that he got lazy. Ron couldn’t understand that mind-set, especially with the talent supposed to be a heredity trait—who could say there wouldn’t be a rival family line that had it also, or that there wouldn’t be a descendant that did not subscribe to the family ideals?

Well, one man’s loss is another man’s gain, as Hermione had once told him the muggle saying goes. It had made Ron’s job much easier because he hadn’t needed to pull Harry from his own search to open the way.

Speaking of his best friend, the bloke had been rather odd lately, odder than he would usually be when holding a secret. Ron had noticed the suspicious looks Hermione had been giving their mutual friend every once in a while when she thought neither Ron nor Harry were looking. But Ron did watch, and he did notice, because it was his job to notice what the others missed and anticipate stuff before it could become a problem.

Harry was on guard for danger, Hermione looked for the facts behind everything and Ron watched their backs to catch the rest—those were their roles.

He had wondered what hidden thing was out to make life complicated this time, but there was little point in asking. Harry would insist that everything was fine out of some sort of misplaced guilt that he was being ‘a bother’, and nobody would get anywhere once that routine got started.

The Chamber looked just as wet, dark and dangerous as Harry had described those four and a bit years ago. Ron could easily spot the evidence of the fight between the basilisk controlled by Riddle’s diary and his best friend armed with Gryffindor’s sword—crumbling walls, broken pillars, debris covering parts of the floor and the ginormous skeleton of the deadly king of snakes. Just looking at the scene and trying to imagine what it must have been like when all the events took place gave him shivers worse than the majority of his darkest nightmares did.

At his side, Hermione was also shivering, but she had better control of herself, which Ron very much envied. They stepped further into the Chamber to spend a bit of time to investigate, separately, before meeting right next to the snake skeleton with its upside-down skull full of fangs. The teen wizard remembered that Hermione had once explained some time ago that Basilisks have more than one set of fangs, unlike practically every other snake with their rows upon rows of small non-venomous teeth aside from the one or two sets of fangs in the front.

When they approached the skeleton, Ron decided that now was as good a time as any to ask his friend something he’d been wondering about for a while.

"Say, 'Mione, do you know what's been eating at Harry?"

The look of surprise she threw him was actually quite insulting. Ron was well aware that he wasn't the fastest broom in the shed, but come on, he wasn't _that_ bad. Despite the many words welling up in him, begging to be spoken, Ron let the silence fall and stretch between them.

They climbed onto the giant snake skull to pull out the highly dangerous poisonous fangs there in focused silence, and it was only when the last of the things had disappeared into the bag that Hermione had prepared beforehand that she spoke.

“So you noticed,” were the words she chose to use. “I had been wondering if you did.”

He again had to fight the urge not to snap something not at all nice at her. It was not Hermione's fault that the changes in Ron, as compared to last year, still blindsided her—it was just annoying.

“That doesn't matter,” he told her, “what's up with Harry though?” At the side, the redhead saw the witch bite her lip hard enough to bleed, as she was wont to do when very frustrated.

“I asked, but I can't get a straight answer out of him,” was the answer. “He keeps dancing around the subject whenever I bring it up. But I did get a promise out of him to stop obstructing me, though he made me promise in return that I stick to the information he bit by bit gives me.”

 _What a strange promise_ , Ron thought but didn’t verbalize. Their mutual friend definitely had something amazingly dangerous to keep safe—again. It was getting ridiculous how many of Great Britain’s, and sometimes the world’s, most lethal things kept ending up crossing Harry’s path, not to mention that a decent number appeared to chase the green-eyed teen instead of falling passively into his lap.

“Can you tell me what you find out?” the male Gryffindor asked his friend and classmate in the privacy of Slytherin’s hidden Chamber of Secrets. “When I have a bit of background information to point me in the right direction, I’ll look into it too. He may have made you promise, but that doesn’t extend to me.”

“Well…” Hermione answered quasi-seriously with a thoughtful smile. “I only promised not to go looking somewhere else. Harry didn’t think to warn me that I couldn’t tell you, and neither did he say that I wasn’t allowed to ‘hypothetically’ discuss it with anyone else. He just made sure that I knew it’s a big secret and should stay that way, so as long as it stays between the two of us he won’t be able to protest.”

“Because we’ve dealt with every other secret perfectly well while also keeping it to ourselves,” Ron said in reaction, unable to suppress an answering conspiratorial smile. “Why would this one be any different?”

The skull now emptied of fangs, both students now slid down to land on the stone floor while carefully holding up the magical bag between them by hand. Though it was yet another of Hermione’s enchanted bags they’d been making use of throughout the year that could hold much more than it appeared to, and was also imbued with all sorts of specific protective magic warding against mishaps with basilisk venom, neither of them was willing to take any sort of risk when it came to handling the extremely corrosive substance.

It was perhaps overly paranoid of them, but even with having warded the bag to hell and back, plus all the checking and double-checking they had already done on said bag’s protections, there was still no guarantee that something as simple as a levitation charm couldn’t damage any part of the enchantments.

Yet, if they had learned anything during all those years associating with Harry Potter, it was that being over-prepared never hurt while being caught unprepared always did.

The journey back to the exit of the pipe was nothing special, and they managed to easily fly up through the slimy pipe’s passage on the back of the broom Ron had brought along for just that purpose. Once outside the bathroom, they made their way to one of the courtyards of the castle, the location the Trio had decided on for today to meet up again.

At the agreed-upon meeting spot, Harry came running several minutes late, while he waved some metallic object around in obvious uncharacteristic excitement.

"I found it! This is the next artifact."

Out of concern for possible eavesdroppers the Trio was in the habit not to use the words horcrux, soul container or Voldemort if they could help it. Ron therefore perfectly understood that Harry meant he'd found the diadem, instead of the useless superficial confirmation that it was the artifact they had been searching for.

"Let me see," Hermione demanded immediately, stretching her hands out for the tainted headpiece.

When the diadem, including the piece of cloth it was wrapped up in, was handed over to their resident raven in lion skin Ron’s only thought was that something felt _off_ about it.

He did not know what about it made him come to that conclusion, or why he felt that way, but the longer he observed the more he was certain of the sensation. The terrible soul magic was somehow not dense enough, if that made any sense. Ron mentally pulled up the memory of the locket to compare, and even then he still found it wanting. He was loathe to trust in something so elusive and uncertain as a hunch—he wasn't Harry; Ron's instincts were not nearly as reliable—but every once in a while he could do it, when required.

During the entire process of stabbing the diadem horcrux to destruction with the sword (while holding the fangs at the ready, just in case) Ron still couldn’t shake off the strange feeling that there was something more going on with this particular horcrux. He had all the time to observe during the proceedings because it was Mione’s turn this time to deal with a soul container.

Harry, he decided, was too self-assured about the outcome, did not show the alertness of being uncertain about the result—and wasn’t _that_ so very… suspicious?

While Ron couldn’t confront his best mate right then, he _would_ bring it up at the next opportunity and demand his answers. In the meantime, the three friends rejoiced in having dealt another blow to Tom Riddle’s stash of horcruxes and went to bed early that evening.

“We need to lure Riddle out,” Hermione said at the mini-DA meeting they held two days later. Only the original members were present—the elite of the Defense Association. “He’s just a few steps away from going down, and _I_ intend to make it _happen_.”

People were quiet at that, only beginning to murmur amongst themselves after a long pause. Regardless of house, age or opinion, they were all quite eager to get on with planning the downfall of their greatest enemy.

The planning took most of the day, and a portion of the next as well. Other parties were consulted or informed as necessary, including the Order, the professors, the ghosts of the castle, the aurors that had come to Hogwarts and the school’s own army of house-elves.

Dumbledore the Trio had already spoken with beforehand, primarily on the status of the horcrux’ hunt, which had led to deciding that the only way to get at the last parts would be to provoke an all-or-nothing battle that would decide all. Anything less, and Voldemort would not be bringing all his metaphorical trump cards to the imaginary table.

The aged headmaster had seemed quite tired when he promised to set the stage at Hogwarts’ grounds, but he wouldn’t hear of staying out of the upcoming final showdown entirely—something that the nearby Madame Pomfrey had clearly despaired over despite knowing that the old transfiguration master would never stay in bed when a war needed to be fought and won.

So, while the adults mobilized, the DA was preparing too.

All throughout the various sessions of planning, with various member formations, it became clear that in order to secure the most advantageous positions they couldn’t afford to focus on Tom Riddle alone. Grayback, Bellatrix and the army Voldemort would undoubtedly be bringing could not be allowed to run rampant—not to mention that many of them wouldn’t just _stop_ once their leader was defeated.

Harry was specifically left out of any planned formations in order to give him the freedom of movement to chase after Riddle by himself once the battle was underway. Not having to worry about disrupting pre-planned strikes due to being absent at critical moments was the main benefit of this arrangement, but it also gave the opposing fraction less leeway to obstruct Harry’s progress.

However, they concluded that Harry did need a wingwizard or witch to back him up.

Hermione could not come because she had to lead the DA into battle. Ron was needed to keep an eye on the movements of the enemy and to direct the counterattacks. Ginny was one of their top fighters, which meant that her absence—in addition to Harry’s—would be sorely missed on the front line if she were to come along. Luna was just not meant for fighting and could do more good in the castle. All the other people were either not close enough to Harry to be reliable, or occupied crucial positions in the coming battle.

That left Neville.

“I’ll come with you,” Neville said determinedly, even stepping forward to underscore the seriousness of the claim. Harry knew that the other boy would not let himself be sent away—it was either take Neville along or he would follow on his own.

“I might not be the best, but what I don’t have in talent I will make up for in effort,” promised Neville then, an oath spoken not just to Harry but also to himself. “Take me with you.”

Harry felt a part of his awareness sink down, and a wash of shadow coming up momentarily to take its place. His eyes became darker, accompanied by the power that was channelled from far beyond through his human form into this world. “I have no doubt that you will help. I never have and I never will doubt your skill.”

And so, the actual preparations began.

For all that the headmaster had said he’d take care of luring his former student to Hogwarts they had never discussed how the professor had planned to do it, Harry reflected later. It was only scant hours before Voldy was scheduled to invade in all his murderous tainted glory that the Trio found out exactly how events were laid out towards the end goal.

The movements of Voldemort after arrival on the grounds of the school had been too erratic on the Marauders’ Map for the three seventh-years to rest easily. For one, the dreaded wizard moved alone despite being still in the midst of gathering his forces on the edge of the lands of Hogwarts’ boundaries. Also, he did not tread in a way that fit with the movement patterns of reconnaissance, or even what a short walk to clear one’s head looked like.

No, this was a purposeful and unhesitant penetration straight into the territory under control of The Resistance (Hogwarts Location) that smacked of machinations brought into practice at the moment they would bring the most advantageous benefits.

And of course Severus Snape, the double—possibly triple—spy whom nobody could bring themselves to trust turned out to be the crucial pivot that would topple Riddle towards taking the bait and sealing the crazed Dark Lord’s fate. The three students—safely hidden under the cloak plus a great number of additional precautionary spells—found Voldemort and Snape mid-conversation in the Shrieking Shack mere moments before Nagini tore into the potions master’s neck, leaving the spy badly poisoned and bleeding to death on the neglected wooden floor.

What followed was Riddle and his snake-shaped horcrux leaving, and the Gryffindors rushing in to keep Slytherin’s Head of House alive longer in order to buy time to get help. Even as both Ron and Hermione ran back to the castle like all the monstrosities they’d ever faced over the years were on their heels as one mob of lethality and nightmare fuel, Harry—who’d stayed behind to build further on their collective efforts to stabilise the professor— _knew_ that it wouldn’t be enough.

It saddened him greatly that he could do nothing to prevent it from happening. The die was cast, the situation had reached and passed its critical point, the professor’s fate had been decided—and from this point on Harry was unable to save the potions master from the consequences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Ron's finally gotten his turn to speak and what a surprise he's turned out to be. Or not? What do you all think?


	6. Fifth step – Bewilder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In which Severus winds up having a single conversation with two different conversation partners._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rejoice, people. This installment marks the true introduction of a character that I'm quite sure everybody has been wanting to see for a long time. On top of that, I managed to finish this chapter after a lot more tweaking and polishing than usual--I hope it shows in the quality. Sorry for the wait.

After the seemingly endless _agony_ came silence and darkness, but no peace. It was mildly unexpected, Severus decided, if only because he had no more energy to spend on questioning why there was no rest to be had even after death.

Eventually, he found himself standing in the white marble departure hall of a specific London train station.

King’s Cross.

Severus hadn’t been there for decades, but he knew the place well enough to recognise it immediately. Once upon a time the young Slytherin student Severus Snape had taken the Hogwarts Express from King’s Cross to Hogsmeade each year, but since graduation there had no longer be a need to return to that place. Even as a teacher there was no necessity to oversee platform 9 ¾ or the train that traditionally brought the students to and from the castle.

So the big question was why the afterlife looked like London’s premier magical station bathed in bright white light.

Also, where were the dead? Severus couldn’t believe that he would be the only one to have died at that precise time in the entire world. At the very least, there should have been others wandering around, even if this place was just one of many gateways.

A lengthy walk around the station revealed no other occupants, or even travellers for that matter. The boundaries seemed to be truly strange, however, because they appeared to at once exist yet not to be there at all. It was more than clear that they were not to be passed, but despite that they managed not to be completely impregnable at the same time.

If one was sufficiently stupid, stubborn or desperate they could make it, Severus decided. He wondered if that was the source of the ghosts found throughout the world, Hogwarts included. Had all of them fought against the inevitable and crossed those unseen-yet-unmistakably-felt lines bending existence itself, then lost parts of themselves in the process to have the shade that was left appear in the living world?

It would seem that way from where he was currently standing on the other side of it.

In the glass windows he passed Severus caught sight of his own appearance; blood-matted hair, dull eyes, still-bleeding throat gruesomely mauled and his bloody teaching robes torn in various places from the struggle with the venomous snake of the Dark Lord. If he’d had any doubt left on whether he’d truly died, the sight of his lethal wounds alone would have vanquished them.

At the far end of the furthest platform, Severus finally found another person. The dark-haired figure was sitting on one side of a lone bench, watching how the trains arrived and departed in perfect silence. Only when Severus cautiously approached did the other person turn their head to look at the potions master, allowing the professor a good look at the stranger’s face in the process.

Potter junior was waiting for him. Wonderful. Severus should have known that this final indignity would take place no matter his state of life.

“Potter!” he growled automatically, as if they were back at the castle and the master spy had just caught the brat red-handed in the middle of some mischief. The boy said nothing and only watched the adult wizard approach with an eerily calm gaze.

It took Severus precious minutes to realise that the young man in front of him wasn’t Potter, for all that this person resembled the brat like a mirror image reflects its original. The stranger with the familiar face wore a set of wide, sweeping jet-black robes with extremely wide sleeves that reminded the professor of his own teaching robes—in better times, when they weren’t as battered or stained as they were currently—if one were to add two or three more layers of fabric on top of them. They were of such a deep black that the fabric seemed to absorb all the light, even as it also appeared to hold a fragmented sort of luminance. Potter, the younger Potter, had never been as comfortable when it came to wearing wizarding clothes as this person amply displayed with their very posture.

Having decelerated his pace to an alert walk, Severus accelerated again to reach the apparent teenager with a more fitting speed that was neither too fast nor too slow—it wouldn’t do to show any sign of weakness, after all—and took place sideways on the unoccupied part of the bench to face the young stranger.

Years in the service of the Dark Lord had taught Severus patience by necessity, and it was the one skill that had always served him best. He waited in what appeared to be content silence for the other person to speak first. And they did, eventually, though Severus couldn’t tell if it had taken hours, days or mere minutes.

“Hast thou decided?”

The professor clenched his teeth together to stop himself from blurting out an unintelligent response that would give away his confusion. Just as strongly he had to suppress the urge to vent his frustration about the entire sequence of recent events by hurling some insult at the stranger he couldn’t read.

“And, pray tell, how am I supposed to decide when I have yet to be given the question?” Severus returned silkily.

“All who arrive here will at length decide what path to take, if any,” was the even-toned answer.

Severus had been observing the person even since he’d sat down, but the short exchange served to truly highlight all the oddities of this strange, strange individual. Potter’s doppelgänger’s face was blank like a clean slate, like a mirror polished to shine without blemish that reflected all light that fell onto it. The hint of emotion seemed painted like a mask over the features to give it the illusion of life, which made it look superficial to Severus’ expert eye, but the master spy wasn’t sure that he wished to know what lurked beneath.

Just this once, his instincts had deemed it too dangerous to know the secrets that were being kept away, judged that the cost would be far too great if he so much as tried to uncover what was hidden—and the professor was not fool enough to ignore either the warnings or the steadily-rising feelings of panic he was beginning to feel more and more intensely.

Despite vividly experiencing the sensation of a noose closing around his neck, Severus managed to get out his words in the form of a polite question that did not betray any of his inner turmoil.

“If I may, with whom do I have the honour of conversing?”

The doppelgänger’s fake expression changed ever-so-slightly to something that could vaguely be called an indulgent twitch of the lips.

“This one has many names to be known by. One is, among others, The End of All Things.”

A horrifying suspicion immediately bloomed inside the sort-of-former Death Eater’s mind, but he did not speak, not yet, while the _Being_ continued His—Their?—spiel of introduction, apparently assuming that Severus hadn’t managed to gasp at least some part of the underlying meaning.

“In addition, one supposes that thou wouldst know one as being among the Four Heralds from the pages of the revered books thou art most familiar with.”

 _The bible_ , Severus’ mind supplied automatically. _The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse._

“I see. Which one are you?”

In response to the question that was in tone somewhere between serious and sarcastic with a touch of nervous jest, the false smile became just that little bit wider. The answer was dry and could have been humorous if the Entity wasn’t utterly incapable of speaking with true emotion ringing through Their voice.

“Why, one is the last, naturally.”

“ _Death_ ,” Severus breathed with terrified awe, barely aware of the name he’d just allowed to escape from his mouth.

“The Destroyer of Worlds,” the God agreed with an odd cheer that fell on Severus’ ears like crunching glass.

All of Severus’ most horrific nightmares couldn’t compare to the dread that filled him at the confirmation, but at the same time the part of him that had always been morbidly fascinated by magic, spells and life—which was somehow still there after everything he’d seen and experienced—couldn’t do anything but feel wonder at meeting something so powerful beyond comprehension.

In a way, he thought ironically—grabbing at the first thread of thought he could in the fog of his blind panic—it was a very odd coincidence that a Death Eater could be found here, sitting next to Death. _If anything_ , was his next rapid-fire thought while he nearly drowned in holding back the hysterical laughter that threatened to come out, _I’d sooner expect Death to be the one to eat me than the other way around_.

Death just watched Severus with somewhat of an indulgent expression and absolute patience that only a God could have. Their sort weren’t bound to the rules of the Higher Powers like mortals were. Time did not rule Death, Destiny did not control Life and neither did Luck influence War. To them, such concepts had power only if the Entity it belonged to was invoked and had arrived to enforce their rules with Their very presence.

It wasn’t said for no reason that names have power, and this went doubly so for Entities of Power. If a God were to speak someone’s name, they claimed power over that person. And if that someone were another Deity it would invoke Their presence and Their power, at the risk of catastrophic consequences. Severus assumed that was why Death had never spoken Their Own name aloud during the entire conversation and why They only hinted at Their identity but spoke Their Own titles like they were part of Themself.

The master spy had never been as glad to have had a pure-blood witch as his mother as he was right now. Eileen Prince had taught her son about the Powers beyond the mortal plane, in accordance with the traditions of the Prince family—for as much as she could, anyway, considering her violent drunkard of a muggle husband. The poor witch had had to sneak in as much as she could whenever the opportunity arose and this had inevitably led to all the knowledge the pure-blood parent had tried to impart ending up in a very fragmented state.

Severus could vaguely remember being taught that Deities often took on a guise familiar to the mortal that happened to cross paths with Them. It was said that many a mortal creature had been driven insane by exposure to the sight of a careless or cruel Entity in Their true form.

Was this why Death looked like Potter’s unearthly twin? And if it was so, why had the most loathed of humans in Severus’ life been chosen?

Before the potions master lost himself in the theories, he forcefully cut off his current thought in order to focus on the Entity still leisurely sitting in front of him. It would not be advisable to get stuck on the secondary issues while the primary problem was yet to be dealt with.

“What are my options?” Severus ventured to ask at last, while he also hoped not too much time had passed in the meantime.

“Thou canst venture onwards hence, abide within this realm or return whence thou hadst come,” the God explained calmly.

 _Move on, stay here or go back._ Those were the possibilities he had, apparently. Severus didn’t bother to question why returning was one of them—the God of Death Themself said he could and why should he even doubt that?

“Then, how do I choose?”

A slow caricature of a smile appeared on the face of the Deity at the question, as if the Entity had been waiting for it all this while, but there came no verbal answer. Instead, a hand clad in pitch black fabric was momentarily swept sideways in a vaguely dramatic gesture that encompassed the entire train station around them.

 _This very place exists to visualise the choices that are on offer_ , Severus realised.

So, if he wanted to stay, he didn’t need to go anywhere.

And if he chose to go, all he had to do was board a train.

But that left returning… What exit would he need to return?

The potions master imagined that going back wasn’t usually on offer and was therefore not as obvious in the design of this place as the other two options. Was this why Death was here? To personally send him back if Severus made it known he wanted to live out his life for as few or many pain-filled days he still had left? Had the God chosen Potter’s appearance to remind Severus of what he would be returning to if he decided to protect that brat one more time? Or was it simply because the boy’s very existence was the last shackle that had bound Severus to life for the last sixteen years?

The more Severus pondered about the three routes and their circumstances, the more he found himself beginning to lean towards living on for however long he could. In this place his near-lifelong depression was unable to linger and that rekindled his hope that he could someday attain a peaceful life. To not die like a mangy dog in a ditch somewhere now seemed like an actual possibility rather than the inevitable outcome at the end of his life.

Although his decision was made, the professor continued the conversation with the aim of gaining just that little bit more information before he made his choice known.

“These are no ordinary circumstances, I presume?” Severus verbalised carefully. “I cannot imagine that the dead are usually allowed to resume their lives without fuss.”

“It dost happen, on occasion,” the God answered with a tinge of indulgence in Their voice. “Thou art an occurrence of rarity, but no more improbable than a shower of rain. Nevertheless,” and here, the God’s gaze became momentary piercing like a sharp needle. “Thine word of preference willst not undo that thine end hadst come.”

_Choosing to return to life will not erase the fact that you were dead._

It was due to the solemnity of the words that Severus now became aware of a muted burn on his back that he had been feeling throughout his stay at this illusionary King’s Cross but which he had not consciously paid attention to until now. With a murmured word of polite apology the professor stood up and approached the nearest window he could find to once more study his own reflection.

While at first there appeared to be nothing amiss, aside from the obvious lethal wounds and the other remnants of dying, the potions master eventually spotted the end of what seemed to be a black line on his half-bare shoulder that just barely peaked out from underneath the edge of his clothes. That prompted him to check the state of his own body more closely by uncovering his chest and shoulders from the partially-shredded robes he still wore. As most of the upper buttons on the front were already lost, loose or undone, the professor was able to quite easily slip both his shoulders up through the now-extra wide collar hole.

A sideways pose in relation to the reflective surface allowed the master spy a better look of part of his back, including the shoulder closest to the window, but it still took a little manoeuvring to allow himself to view the surface somewhat clearly in the misty reflection with its perpetual whitish tinge.

A great area of his skin was marked, he found—not entirely unlike the Dark Mark on his arm that was present even in this in-between realm of the dead. The new all-black symbol was larger than any other the master spy had ever come across, whether it be among the dark wizards he’d mingled with over the years or on the pages of the many tomes he’d read. Its design made him think of thorns of far greater size than the stem they grew from, twisted in sets of orderly formations that fanned outwards, the entirety of the brand’s style combining the swirls reminiscent of moving water with the angular pattern that sharp rocks would have.

Its central part was distinct, yet somehow seamlessly integrated into the whole, almost like someone had drawn that first and then decided to expand it. Even in this odd environment, the lines engraved in his skin radiated magic and power in its purest form and caused that burn soft enough that he hadn’t truly noticed it until mere moments ago.

Overwhelmed by the mark’s presence, Severus needed several minutes to comprehend what it meant and why it would be on him.

Then, the clues fell together to give him a more coherent, if incomplete, whole. The professor whipped back around to look at the personification of Death still sitting on the bench with greater understanding than ever of why They were present.

And he _dreaded_.

Without much further thought, he forced himself to voice which path he had chosen.

“Eternal One, I wish to return.”

There was no ‘art thee certain?’ or any other comment. Severus, despite his currently muddled thoughts, was aware enough to wonder why he had expected that there would be. The God on the bench gave no indication that the wizard’s request had been heard—there was only a sudden rush of blackness coming up to meet the wizard as the professor’s vision of the fake King’s Cross soundlessly fell away and shattered into nothing.

_“Do not forget, lest thou art prepared to add to thine slate.”_

The next thing Severus became aware of was himself lying sideways on a creaky wooden floor, trashing, seizing and vomiting up nothing but liquid. He could not find the strength to open his eyes and could do nothing but endure as his body convulsed while he still heaved what felt like not just the contents of his stomach but the organ itself up and out through his mouth.

It was somewhere between two waves of these excruciating fits that he realised that his eyes were actually open and must have been for a while. The problem was simply that the signals apparently weren’t making it to his brain.

“Where—” he managed to get out with much effort when the fits started to subside at last, some dozen or so rounds later. More words were beyond him in his current state, and Severus was already exceptionally proud of that single word he’d vocalised more or less coherently.

It was at that point that his vision started to clear from black nothingness to blotchy spots of colour and then all the way to smudged coloured shapes. In the haze of blurry moving shapes the professor thought that he could discern that there was somebody else present, though he couldn’t yet tell who it was nor why they were there.

Whoever they were, this person didn’t seem hostile, judging by the calmness their magic radiated—although Severus had his suspicions that this day would not be getting any better.

Sure enough, once his sight had recovered to the point that the master spy could reliably tell who was patiently sitting next to the professor’s aching body with a wet cloth ready in one hand his mood was not at all improved.

As if this day hadn’t already made it straight into the top five worst days of Severus Snape’s life.

“Hello professor,” the real Potter near-whispered with a calmness and cheerfulness that did not fit the situation and the presumable confusion Severus’ violently spontaneous resurrection should have created. “Welcome back.”

Coming face-to-face with the real Potter after having dealt with a God that wore the boy’s shape until what felt like only seconds ago was an extremely jarring experience. Severus blamed that for the embarrassingly long time it took him to respond to Potter’s greeting.

“Potter, _what_ are _you_ doing here?”

There was something very odd about the look that the boy gave him, but Severus couldn’t quite tell what part of it was the cause of the disjoined feeling that the potions professor found himself unable to fully shake off.

“I’ve been keeping you alive.”

“Truly? So it is you I have to thank for this… deplorable state I have found myself in?”

“Professor,” the boy cut in before Severus could elaborate at length on exactly how he felt about having had Merlin-knew what sorts of medical treatments attempted on him without permission and how having Potter’s unskilled hands being the ones to have performed it made the whole situation worse still. “If I hadn’t put in the effort, you would’ve come back in a much less pleasant manner.”

And that warning, more than anything, made Severus sit up (metaphorically) and pay attention to what _hadn’t_ been said so far.

“What do you know,” he hissed at the student with narrowed eyes, “about this that I don’t?”

The infuriating boy just raised an eyebrow at him.

“Are you going to listen to what I say, or are you just looking for an excuse to start shouting?”

Severus bit down hard on his own tongue in order not to snap at Potter. There was a sense of disconnect growing in the back of his mind that warned him to tread lightly, before the spy miss-stepped and lost any advantage that could be won with caution.

The younger wizard appeared to take the silence as acquiescence and briefly patted down Severus’ sweaty forehead with the cold cloth before holding it there until Severus took over the job to keep the wet fabric in place.

“Sir,” the boy began, Lily’s eyes efficiently sweeping over the professor’s prone state on the floor without ever meeting the man’s eyes. “You died of Nagini’s venom.”

Hearing it said so plainly was somewhat of a shock.

Severus had truly died, which he knew because Death had said so, but the fact hadn’t had time to sink into his mind yet. Now the knowledge bit itself into Severus’ psyche, carving out another scar to join the rest, and the potions master had to fight not to show his inner pain.

The professor almost missed Potter’s next words, but did raise his gaze in time to meet the endless emerald eyes as they came to look straight back at him.

“I brought you back.”

And as the paranoid wizard looked into the deep green eyes the boy had inherited from his mother, he suddenly realised that he could see Death in their depths, just as he had seen a spark of Potter in Death’s eyes, back in that godforsaken train station.

Suddenly, Death’s appearance seemed more _deliberate_ than whim. Was it even a choice, conscious or otherwise, that Death had appeared in the guise of Harry Potter? Or was there a reason that had forced that form onto Death?

In any case, it was clear to Severus that there was a connection between Potter and Death—and the boy had all but admitted it with the way he was behaving and the words he _didn’t_ use.

“Potter.” the dark wizard breathed with a terrible mix of dread and anxiety he had never expected to feel in regards to any Potter. The master spy had looked the Dark Lord in the eye without fear, had seen the most gruesome sights without flinching and survived the lethality of a full-blown war, but he would swear an oath on this being the most terrifying moment of his life.

In the total silence of the Shrieking Shack, where he’d once almost lost his life and had now gone through both death and resurrection in a single day, the words that Severus spoke were barely audible.

“Are you Death?”

The potions professor was overcome with tension, and he actually did not need Potter’s confirmation to know that the answer was yes—but Severus needed to hear it or he would never find rest.

“For all intents and purposes, I suppose that I am,” the boy answered easily, his head cocked to the side in a surprisingly inquisitive way. The dour wizard was having trouble to hold himself back from reaching out to touch the child’s black hair, to check if he was real and not part of a fevered dream from the brink of death.

“More correct would be to say that a part of me is.”

That addition had Severus’ brows rise involuntarily, then frown in deep thought.

“Am I to believe that you are not alone in your head?”

As much as it came out sounding like a joke, the elder wizard was actually very serious. Divine possession was a very real and very dangerous possibility that they could not afford to overlook.

The spike of fear for the student lasted only a short time, because the boy soon shook his head no.

“It’s nothing like that.”

“Then what is it, Potter? Stop dodging the question. What is your relation to one another?” Severus pressed on.

There was one more moment of silence before Potter _finally_ explained.

“I presume that for the purpose of this discussion the best term is Aspects, as I am unsure of what else to use. The Death you saw and the me here—we are aspects of the same Force, wearing the same face. The Aspects of Death.”

“How—”

 _…Is that possible_ , Severus wanted to scream. It was one earth-shattering shock after another when it came to this boy.

The Aspects of a Deity had to do with the interpretation of Their Divine Power and what sides there were to the same thing. A God of change could just as easily cause decay as They did growth or progress—and Deities only rarely had just one singular power.

Death was a terribly powerful Force that touched on a great number of other related concepts, and because of that it had many Aspects. It was Renewal, Destruction, End, Decay, Evolution, Reversal, Change, Revolution, War, Illness, Loss, Separation—and many more.

If what Potter said was true, he was the personification of at least one of the Aspects that belonged to Death, making the boy either a God in disguise, a Host or an Avatar, all of which just about came down to the same thing in most regards. Severus thought the latter two were more likely, as those had less of a risk to cause reality to break in the long run and were thus a much safer way for a God to exert influence on the mortal world.

 _And they also fit in better among the mortals_ , thought the spy when he noticed that the student had in the meantime begun cleaning up the blood, slime and other liquids that were splattered all over the professor. The boy was letting him think in peace and clearly took care not to draw attention to himself with exemplary patience and calm, all in order to give the man the time he needed.

Severus was feeling too worn out to bother with keeping the inner turmoil out of his tone.

“What is your Aspect, Potter?”

Without looking up from his self-imposed work, Potter gave his answer immediately and without putting any sort of weight into his words.

“I am Mortality. I am everything Death both is and isn’t.”

It was a helpful answer but at the same time it wasn’t, if only because it left too many questions open. Severus felt the exhaustion of the day pressing down onto him, which made him decide to leave that avenue of questioning for the moment in favour of something that he needed an answer to more.

“How did you come to be entangled with a God?”

“I was born this way,” Potter told the spy grimly, confirming for Severus that the boy was most probably an Avatar. “That is the simplest, most straightforward explanation I can give you, professor. But hush now, sir. You are exhausted and we are about to have company.”

The noises that became louder with each passing second did indeed prove to be Poppy Pomfrey when she burst into the room with the two other members of the Golden Trio coming in close behind her. Severus knew that they hadn’t directly apparated into the Shack for fear of landing on top of him and making his injuries worse.

He felt strangely glad at the prospect of being taken back to the castle’s infirmary for treatment--he couldn’t even bring himself to care about Poppy’s impending fussing. The events of the day had quite exceeded his tolerance for handling shocks, and the master spy wanted nothing more than to sleep and forget about it all for a few hours.

When he was laid out on a stretcher the potions master reflected on that he would have to talk to Potter again at a later moment. Delving into the reason for Potter’s deeper connection with Death was very interesting and useful to know, but Severus hadn’t even gotten to ask for the information that was the most important of all.

Why had Death—Potter—even given him the option to come back?

What was the point of it?

Severus _needed_ to know the answer to that, if only to protect himself from losing control entirely over his own fate when, inevitably, Death was going to get involved—if They weren’t involved already.

The gentle swaying of the stretcher as it was levitated to float alongside Poppy while she prepared to run back to the infirmary was sure to lull Severus into an exhausted sleep that he was unable to avoid. He was certain that by the time he woke, a considerable amount of time would have passed.

Right now, the prospect of sleeping for a long time sounded very appealing. Severus would just have to blame it on the heavy-duty potions Poppy’d had him drink. The mystery of Potter’s background workings would have to wait until the professor didn’t feel like the world itself had crushed his body.

The last thing the potions master saw before his eyes closed was a glimpse of Potter, stood amidst his Gryffindor friends while they were undoubtedly discussing what had happened to the spy in Mr. Weasley and Ms. Granger’s absence. The final fleeting thought that Severus managed to form before his consciousness sank away was on the mysterious meeting that he’d witnessed a year earlier.

Would he eventually find out what had been said or was this knowledge doomed to stay out of his reach forever?

And then he knew nothing more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some questions have been answered, but more should have sprung to mind by now. Death is just about the most complex character to write and it's not because of his archaic language. We'll see Them again.
> 
> This chapter is special in yet another way: it's the first part to be entirely written from a single character's point of view. How do you all like this deeper look into Severus Snape's mind?


End file.
